
Class ^L2L^f 

Book /}& cT<y - 
Gopyrightls? . 



CDEffilGHT DEPOSOi 




THE SECRET TRAILS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



' 




He struggled frantically to drag himself up again upon the 

ledge. 



THE 

SECRET TRAILS 



BY f - 

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

Author of "The Feet of the Furtive," 
"Kings in Exile," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED 



Hfttt fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 



All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1914, 

By the Associated Sunday Magazines. 

Copyright, 1915, 

By the National Sunday Magazine, 

By the Red Book Corporation, and 

By the Illustrated Sunday Magazine. 

Copyright, 1916, 

By the International Magazine Company. 



Copyright, 1916, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and clectrotyped. Published November, 1916. 




NOV !6i9l6 

©CI.A445659 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Black Boar of Lonesome Water . . . i 

The Dog That Saved the Bridge .... 33 

The Calling of the Lop-horned Bull ... 53 

The Aigrette 77 

The Cabin in the Flood 90 

The Brothers of the Yoke 115 

The Trailers 136 

Cock-crow 154 

The Ledge on Bald Face 179 

The Morning of the Silver Frost .... 201 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

He struggled frantically to drag himself up 

again upon the ledge ...... Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

The black boar had wandered so far into the wilder- 
ness that he was safe from pursuit 10 

He only knew his lines were close ahead, and he must 
reach them 50 

Black and huge against the pallid radiance towered a 
moose bull 56 

The mother egret flapped blindly upon the top of the 
water 84 

"This ain't no menagerie we've got here, Tom. It's 
a Noah's Ark, that's what it be!" 102 ' 

He launched himself into the battle 132 

Leaping upwards and striking downwards with his 
destroying heels 160 



THE SECRET TRAILS 

The Black Boar of Lonesome Water 



^| AHE population of Lonesome Water — 
■*■ some fourscore families in all — acknowl- 
edged one sole fly in the ointment of its self- 
satisfaction. Slowly, reluctantly, it had been 
brought to confess that the breed of its pigs 
was not the best on earth. They were small, 
wiry pigs, over-leisurely of growth, great 
feeders, yet hard to fatten; and in the end 
they brought but an inferior price in the far- 
off market town by the sea, to which their 
frozen, stiff-legged carcases were hauled on 
sleds over the winter's snow. It was decided 
by the village council that the breed must be 
severely improved. 

They were a peculiar people, the dwellers 
about the remote and lovely shores of Lone- 

i 



2 THE SECRET TRAILS 

some Water. They were the descendants of 
a company of Welsh sectarians who, having 
invented a little creed of their own which was 
the sole repository of truth and righteousness, 
had emigrated to escape the contamination 
of their neighbours. They had come to 
Canada because Canada was not crowded; 
and they had chosen the lovely valley of 
Lonesome Water, not for its loveliness, but 
for its lonesomeness and its fertility, and for 
the fact that it was surrounded by tracts of 
barren land which might keep off the defile- 
ments of the world. Here they devoted 
themselves to farming. and to the contempla- 
tion of their own superiority; and having a 
national appreciation of the value of a half- 
penny, they prospered. 

As may easily be understood, it was no 
small thing for the people of Lonesome 
Water to be forced, by the unanswerable logic 
of the market price, to acknowledge that their 
pigs were inferior to the pigs of the ungodly. 
Of course, there were many in the Settlement 
who refused flatly to believe that this could 



THE BLACK BOAR 3 

be so. Providence could not be so short- 
sighted as to permit it. But the majority 
faced the truth with solemn resolution. And 
Morgan Fluellyn, the hog reeve of Lonesome 
Water, was sent to K-ville, to interview the 
secretary of the provincial agricultural so- 
ciety, and to purchase — if it could be done 
at a bargain — some pigs of a pedigree worthy 
the end in view. 

In the eyes of Morgan Fluellyn — small, 
deep-set, choleric eyes — the town of K-ville, 
with its almost two thousand inhabitants, its 
busy picture show, its three pubs, its cheer- 
ful, friendly girls, who adorned their hats 
with lavish flowers and feathers, was a place 
upon which the fires of an outraged heaven 
might some day fall. He had no mind to be 
caught in K-ville at the moment of this mer- 
ited catastrophe. He lost no time in putting 
through his business. 

When he found the secretary, and learned 
the price of pedigree pigs, his indignation 
nearly choked him. With righteous stern- 
ness he denounced the secretary, the society, 



4 THE SECRET TRAILS 

and the Government, and stalked from the 
office. But an hour in the air brought him 
to a clearer understanding, and his ambitions 
on behalf of his community revived. Lone- 
some Water had the truth. She had a 
monopoly of the virtues. She should also 
have pigs that would command these outra- 
geous prices. Why should the ungodly tri- 
umph? 

And they did not — at least, not altogether. 
Morgan Fluellyn was allowed to achieve a 
bargain. The mollified secretary consented 
to sell him, at a reduced figure, a big black 
Berkshire boar, of unimpeachable breeding, 
but small success in the show-pen, and in tem- 
per not to be relied on. The great boar had 
a steel ring through his snout, and Fluellyn set 
out with him proudly. Fluellyn was de- 
lighted with his prize, but it appeared that his 
prize was not equally delighted with Fluellyn. 
In fact, the great grunting beast was surly and 
cantankerous from the first. He would look 
at his purchaser with a malign cunning in his 
eyes, and sometimes make a slash at his leg 



THE BLACK BOAR 5 

with gnashing jaws. But Fluellyn was by no 
means lacking in the valour and pugnacity of 
his race, and his patience was of the shortest 
By means of that rope through his captive's 
snout, he had an advantage which he knew 
how to make the most of. The fringe of fiery 
whisker, which haloed his red, clean-shaven 
cheeks and chin like a ruff, fairly curled with 
wrath at the beast's presumption, and he ad- 
ministered such discipline with his cudgel as 
he felt sure would not soon be forgotten. 

After this, for mile upon mile of the lonely 
backwoods trail, there was peace, and even 
an apparent unanimity of purpose, between 
Fluellyn and his sullenly grunting charge. 
But the great black boar was not really sub- 
dued. He was merely biding his time. And 
because he bided it cunningly, his time came. 

The trail was bad, the going hard, for there 
was no unnecessary travel either way between 
Lonesome Water and her neighbour settle- 
ments. Fluellyn was tired. It was getting 
along in the afternoon. He sat down on a log 
which lay invitingly by the side of the trail. 



6 THE SECRET TRAILS 

From the bag of feed which he carried on his 
back, he poured out a goodly allowance for 
the black boar, being not unwilling to keep 
the brute amiable. Then he seated himself 
on the log, in the caressing spring sunshine, 
and pulled out his pipe. For Fluellyn 
smoked. It was his one concession to human 
weakness, and it had almost lost him his elec- 
tion as hog-reeve. Nevertheless, he smoked. 
The air was bland, and he, too, became almost 
bland. His choleric eyes grew visionary. 
He forgot to distrust the black boar. 

The perfidious beast devoured its feed with 
noisy enthusiasm, at the same time watching 
Fluellyn out of the corner of its wicked little 
eye. When the feed was finished, it flashed 
about without a ghost of a warning and 
charged full upon Fluellyn. 

Behind the log on which Fluellyn sat the 
ground fell away almost perpendicularly, per- 
haps, twelve or fifteen feet, to the edge of a 
foaming brown trout-brook fringed with al- 
ders. As the boar charged, Fluellyn sprang 
to his feet. At the same time he tried to 



THE BLACK BOAR 7 

spring backwards. His heels failed to clear 
the log; and in this his luck was with him, 
for the boar this time meant murder. He 
plunged headlong, with a yell of indignation, 
over the steep. And the animal, checking it- 
self at the brink, glared down upon him sav- 
agely, gnashing its tusks. 

Fluellyn was quite seriously damaged by 
his fall. His head and forehead were badly 
cut, so that his face was bathed in blood and 
dirt, through which his eyes glared upward 
no less fiercely than those of his adversary. 
His left arm was broken and stabbing at him 
with keen anguish, but he was too enraged to 
notice his hurts, and if it had been suggested 
to him that his fall had saved his life, he 
would have blown up with fury. He flew at 
the face of the steep like a wild-cat, struggling 
to scramble up it and get at the foe. But in 
this purpose, luckily for him, he was foiled by 
his broken arm. The boar, too, though eager 
to follow up his triumph, durst not venture the 
descent. 

For some minutes, therefore, the antago- 



8 THE SECRET TRAILS 

nists faced each other, the boar leaning over 
as far as he could, with vicious squeals and 
grunts and slaverings and gnashings, while 
the indomitable Fluellyn, with language 
which he had never guessed himself capable 
of, and which would have caused his instant 
expulsion from Lonesome Water, defied and 
reviled him, and strove to claw up to him. 
At last the boar, who, being the victor, could 
best afford it, grew tired of the game. Toss- 
ing his armed snout in the air, he drew back 
from the brink and trotted off into the fir- 
woods on the other side of the trail. De- 
lighted with his first taste of freedom, he kept 
on for some miles without a halt, till at last 
he came to a pond full of lily leaves, with soft 
black mud about its edges. Here he lay down 
and wallowed till his wrath cooled. Then 
he stretched himself in the grass and went to 
sleep. 

As for Fluellyn, his wrath had no excuse 
for cooling, for the anguish of his hurts at last 
diverted his attention from it, more or less. 
He stumbled on down the stream till he 



THE BLACK BOAR 9 

reached a spot where he could get up the bank. 
By this time he was feeling faint, and his 
angry eyes were half blinded with the blood 
which he kept wiping from them with his 
sleeve. Nevertheless, he returned to the 
scene of his overthrow, and from that point, 
without a thought of prudence, took up the 
trail of the boar through the fir thickets. But 
he was no expert in woodcraft at the best of 
times, and the trail soon eluded him. Forced 
at last to confess himself worsted for the mo- 
ment, he made his way back to the log, 
snatched up the bag of feed, that his enemy 
might not return and enjoy it, and with 
dogged resolution set his face once more to- 
ward Lonesome Water. 

When he arrived there, he was babbling 
in a fever. His appearance was a scandal, 
and his language cleared the village street. 
There were many who held that he had gone 
astray under the wicked influence of K-ville — 
which was no more than they had always said 
would happen to a man who smoked tobacco. 
But the majority were for not condemning 



io THE SECRET TRAILS 

him when he was unable to defend himself. 
For three weeks he lay helpless. And by the 
time he was well enough to tell his story, 
which was convincing to all but the sternest 
of his censors, the black boar had wandered 
so far into the wilderness that he was safe from 
pursuit. There were no woodsmen in Lone- 
some Water cunning enough to follow up his 
obscure and devious trail. 



II 

In spite of the allurements of the lily pool, 
the black boar forsook it after a couple of 
blissful days' wallowing. The wanderlust, 
choked back for generations, had awakened 
in his veins. He pushed on, not caring in 
what direction, for perhaps a fortnight. 
Though food was everywhere abundant, he 
had always to work for it, so he grew lean 
and hard and swift. The memory of a thou- 
sand years of servitude slipped from him, as 
it were, in a night, and at the touch of the 
wilderness many of the instincts and aptitudes 




The black boar had wandered so far into the wilderness 
that he was safe from pursuit. 



THE BLACK BOAR n 

of a wild thing sprang up in him. Only the 
instinct of concealment, of stealth, was lack- 
ing to this new equipment of his. He feared 
nothing, and he hunted nothing more elusive 
than lily-roots ; so he took no care to disguise 
his movements. 

At first, because of the noise he made, the 
forest seemed to him to be empty of all living 
things but birds. Then one day, as he lay 
basking in the sun, he saw a wild-cat pounce 
upon a rabbit. At first he stared curiously. 
But when he saw the wild-cat feasting on her 
prey, he decided that he wanted the banquet 
for himself. As he burst through the bushes, 
the great cat stared for an instant in utter 
amazement, never having seen or dreamed of 
such an apparition. Then, her eyes like 
moons, her six-inch bob-tail fluffed to a bottle- 
brush, and every hair stiffly on end, she 
bounced into the nearest tree. There in a 
crotch she crouched, spitting and yowling, 
while her enemy tranquilly devoured the rab- 
bit. The tit-bit was not altogether to his taste, 
but he chose to eat it rather than let the great 



iz THE SECRET TRAILS 

cat have it. And, after all, it was something 
of a change from roots and fungi. 

Having thus discovered that rabbits were 
more or less edible, the black boar thencefor- 
ward chased them whenever they crossed his 
path. He never came anywhere near the 
catching of them, but, in spite of that, he was 
not discouraged. Some day, perhaps, he 
would meet a rabbit that could not run so fast 
as the others. 

Fond as the boar was of wallowing in the 
cool mud of the lily ponds, he was, in reality, 
a stickler for personal cleanliness. When the 
mud was dry, he would roll in the moss, and 
scratch himself till it was all rubbed off, leav- 
ing his black bristles in perfect condition. 
His habits were as dainty as a cat's, and his 
bed of dead leaves, in the heart of some dense 
thicket, was always kept dry and fastidiously 
clean. 

One day, as he lay asleep in one of these 
shadowy lairs, a bear came by, moving noise- 
lessly in the hope of surprising a rabbit or a 
brooding partridge. A breath of air brought 



THE BLACK BOAR 13 

to the great prowler's nostrils a scent which 
seemed to him strongly out of place there in 
the depths of the forest. He stopped, lifted 
his muzzle, and sniffed critically. Yes, that 
smell was unquestionably pig. Once he had 
captured a fat young pig on the outskirts of 
a settler's farm, and his jaws watered at the 
delicious remembrance. 

Crouching low, he crept up toward the 
thicket, led by his discriminating nose. His 
huge paws made no more sound than the glid- 
ing of a shadow. Peering in through the 
tangle of twigs and leafage, he was able to 
make out some black creature asleep. He 
paused suspiciously. The pig of his remem- 
brance was white and much smaller than the 
animal he saw before him. Still, his nose as- 
sured him that this was pig all right. His 
appetite hushed his prudence, and, crashing 
into the thicket, he hurled himself upon the 
slumbering form. 

And then a strange thing — a most discon- 
certing thing — happened to him. That slum- 
bering form heaved up beneath him, grunting, 



i 4 THE SECRET TRAILS 

and shot out between his hind legs with a vio- 
lence which pitched him forward on his nose. 
Before he could recover himself, it wheeled 
about, looking many times larger than he had 
imagined it to be, and charged upon him with 
an ear-splitting squeal of rage. The shock 
bowled him clean over, so that he rolled out 
of the thicket, and at the same time he got a 
tearing slash down his flank. Startled quite 
out of his customary pugnacious courage, he 
bawled like a yearling cub, scrambled to his 
feet, and took to flight ignominiously. But 
the unknown fury behind him could run as 
fast as he, and it clung to his heels, squealing 
horribly and rooting at his rump with murder- 
ous tusks. In a panic he clawed his way up 
the nearest tree. 

Finding himself no longer pursued, he 
turned and stared down from among the 
branches. He saw that his victorious adver- 
sary was indeed a pig, but such a pig! He 
felt himself most treacherously ill-used — 
betrayed, in fact. It was out of all fitness 
that a pig should be so big, so black, and so 



THE BLACK BOAR 15 

abrupt in manners. Had he dared to put the 
matter again to the test, he might have 
avenged his defeat, for he was much the 
heavier of the two, and immeasurably the bet- 
ter armed for battle. But he had no stomach 
to face that squealing fury again. He crawled 
on up to a convenient crotch, and lay there 
licking his scars and whimpering softly to 
himself, his appetite for pork entirely spoiled. 

The boar, after ramping about beneath the 
tree for a matter of perhaps a half hour, at 
last trotted off in disgust, confirmed in his 
arrogance. This easy victory over so large 
and formidable a foe convinced him, had he 
needed any convincing, that he was lord of 
the wilderness. Had he chanced, about that 
time, to meet another bear, of sturdier resolu- 
tion than the first, he would have had a rude 
disillusionment. 

As it was, however, no later than the follow- 
ing day he had an adventure which jarred his 
complacence. It taught him not exactly pru- 
dence, but, at least, a certain measure of cir- 
cumspection, which was afterwards to profit 



16 THE SECRET TRAILS 

him. It was just on the edge of evening, when 
the wilderness world was growing vague with 
violet shadows, and new, delicate scents were 
breathing from leaf and bush at the touch of 
the dew, that the confident wanderer caught 
sight of a little black-and-white striped ani- 
mal. It was hardly as large as a rabbit. It 
was not the colour of a rabbit. It had by no 
means the watchful, timorous air of a rabbit. 
As a matter of fact, it was a skunk; but his far- 
off ancestors had neglected to hand down to 
him any informatory instinct about skunks. 
He jumped to the conclusion that it was a 
rabbit, all the same — perhaps the fat, slow 
rabbit which he had been hoping to come 
across. He hurled himself upon it with his 
utmost dash, determined that this time the 
elusive little beast should not escape him. 

And it didn't. In fact, it hardly tried to. 
When he was within a few feet of it, it jerked 
its long tail into the air, and at the same time 
something dreadful and incomprehensible 
struck him in the face. It struck him in the 
eyes, the nose, the mouth, all at the same time. 



THE BLACK BOAR 17 

It scalded him, it blinded him, it suffocated 
him, it sickened him. He tried to stop him- 
self, but he was too late. His impetus car- 
ried him on so that he trod down and killed 
the little animal without being aware of it. 

In fact, he paid no attention whatever to 
his victory. All he cared about, for the mo- 
ment, was breath. His outraged lungs had 
shut up tight to keep out the intolerable in- 
vader. At last they opened, with a hoarse 
gasp of protest at being forced to. Having 
regained his breath, such as it was, he wanted 
to see. But his eyes were closed with a burn- 
ing, clinging, oily stuff, which also clung 
foully in his nostrils and in his mouth. He 
strove clumsily to rub them clear with his 
fore-hooves, and, failing in this, he flung him- 
self on his back with head outstretched and 
rolled frantically in the moss. Achieving 
thus a measure of vision out of one inflamed 
and blurred eye, he caught sight of a marshy 
pool gleaming through the trees. Gasping, 
coughing, blundering into tree and bush as 
he went, he rushed to the water's edge and 



18 THE SECRET TRAILS 

plunged his outraged features as deep as he 
could into the cool slime. There he rooted 
and champed and wallowed till the torment 
grew less intolerable to all his senses, and his 
lungs once more performed their office with- 
out a spasm. 

But still that deadly taint clung nauseat- 
ingly to his nostrils and his palate; and at last, 
quite beside himself with the torment, he 
emerged from the water and started on a mad 
gallop through the woods, trying to run away 
from it. He ran till he sank exhausted and 
fell into a heavy sleep. When he woke up, 
there was the smell still with him, and for days 
he could scarcely eat for the loathing of it. 

Gradually, however, the clean air and the 
deodorizing forest scents made him once more 
tolerable to himself. But the lesson was not 
forgotten. When, one bright and wind-swept 
morning, he came face to face with a young 
porcupine, he stopped politely. The porcu- 
pine also stopped and slowly erected its quills 
till its size was almost doubled. The boar 
was much surprised. This sudden enlarge- 



THE BLACK BOAR 19 

merit, indeed, was so incomprehensible that it 
angered him. The strange absence of fear in 
the nonchalant little creature also angered 
him. He was inclined to rush upon it at once 
and chew it up. But the fact that its colour 
was more or less black-and-white gave him a 
painful reminder of his late experience. 
Perhaps this was another of those slow rab- 
bits! He checked himself and sniffed sus- 
piciously. The stranger, with a little grum- 
bling squeak, came straight at him — not 
swiftly, or, indeed, angrily, but with a confi- 
dent deliberation that was most upsetting. 
The boar was big enough to have stamped the 
porcupine's life out with one stroke of his 
hoof. But instead of standing up to his tiny 
challenger, he turned tail and bolted off 
squealing through the undergrowth as if noth- 
ing less than a troop of lions were after him. 



Ill 

The course of the black boar's wanderings 
brought him out at last upon the desolate 



20 THE SECRET TRAILS 

northern shores of Lonesome Water. At 
night he could sometimes see, miles away 
across the lake, a gleam of the discreet lights 
of the Settlement — perhaps, indeed, from the 
windows of Morgan Fluellyn himself, whose 
cottage was close down on the waterside. 
This northern shore, being mostly swamp and 
barren, was entirely ignored by the dwellers 
in Lonesome Water Settlement, who were 
satisfied with their own fertile fields, and not 
of an inquiring temperament. But it offered 
the black boar just the retreat he was now in 
search of. Tired of wandering, he found 
himself a lair in a dense and well-drained 
thicket near the bank of a lilied stream which 
here wound slowly through reeds and willows 
to the lake. 

Here, with food abundant, and never skunk 
or smell of skunk to challenge his content, he 
wallowed and rooted the gold-and-green sum- 
mer away and found life good. He was not 
troubled by forebodings of the winter, because 
he had never known anything of winter be- 
yond the warmth of a well-provided pen. 



THE BLACK BOAR 21 

One dreamy and windless afternoon in late 
September, when a delicate bluish haze lay 
over the yellowing landscape, a birch canoe 
was pushed in among the reeds, and a woods- 
man in grey homespun stepped ashore. He 
was gaunt and rugged of feature, with quiet, 
keen, humorous eyes, and he moved in his 
soft hide "larrigans" as lightly as a cat. He 
knew of a little ice-cold spring in this neigh- 
bourhood not far from the river bank, and 
he never passed the spot without stopping to 
drink deep at its preternaturally crystal flow. 

He had not gone more than fifty yards up 
the shore when his eye was caught by a most 
unusual trail. He stopped to examine it. 
As he did so, a sudden crash in the bushes 
made him turn his head sharply. A massive 
black shape, unlike anything he had ever seen 
before, was charging down upon him. What- 
ever it was — and he remembered a picture he 
had once seen of a wild boar charging a party 
of hunters — he knew it meant mischief of the 
worst kind. And he had left his gun in the 
canoe. Under the circumstances, he was not 



22 THE SECRET TRAILS 

too proud to run. He ran well, which was 
lucky for him. As he swung up his long legs 
into the branches, the black boar reared him- 
self against the trunk, gnashing his tusks and 
squealing furiously. The man, from his safe 
perch, looked down upon him thoughtfully 
for perhaps a whole minute. 

"Well, I'll be durned!" he ejaculated at last, 
getting out his pipe and slowly filling it. "Ef 
'tain't Fluellyn's pig! To think Jo Peddler 
'Id ever have to run from a pig!" 

For perhaps a half hour Peddler sat there 
and smoked contentedly enough, with the pa- 
tience which the wilderness teaches to all its 
children. He expected his gaoler to go away 
and let him make a dash for the canoe. But 
presently he concluded that the boar had no 
intention of going away. If so, it was time 
to do something if he wanted to get across 
the lake before dark. 

He cleaned the ashes out of his pipe and 
saved them carefully. Then he refilled the 
pipe very loosely and smoked it violently half 
through, which yielded him another collec- 



THE BLACK BOAR 23 

tion of pungent ash. He repeated the process 
several times, till he judged he had enough of 
the mixture — ash and dry, powdered tobacco. 
Then, grinning, he let himself down till he 
was barely out of reach, and began to tease 
and taunt his gaoler till the surly beast was 
beside itself with rage, snorting and squealing 
and rearing itself against the trunk in its ef- 
forts to get at him. At length, with infinite 
pains and precision, he sifted the biting mix- 
ture into his adversary's eyes and wide, snort- 
ing nostrils. By great good luck he man- 
aged to hit the mark exactly. How he wished 
the stuff had been pepper! 

At the result he nearly fell out of the tree 
with ecstasy. The boar's squeal was cut short 
by a paroxysm of choking and coughing. 
The great animal nearly fell over backwards. 
Then, remembering his ancient experience 
with the skunk, he rushed blindly for the 
water, his eyes, for the most part, screwed up 
tight, so that he crashed straight through 
everything that stood in his path. Peddler 
dropped from his refuge and ran for his canoe, 



24 THE SECRET TRAILS 

laughing delightedly as he ran. What little 
grudge he owed the animal for his temporary 
imprisonment, he felt to have been amply re- 
paid, and he was glad he had not yielded to 
his first impulse and emptied the hot coals 
from his pipe into its nostrils. 

"I'll be givin' yer compliments to Flu- 
ellyn," he shouted, as he paddled away, "an' 
likely he'll be over to call on ye afore long!" 

IV 

Jo Peddler had small love for the peculiar 
community of Lonesome Water. He never 
visited it except under the necessity of buy- 
ing supplies for his camp. He used to swear 
that its very molasses was sour, that its tea 
was so self-righteous that it puckered his 
mouth. He never slept under one of its roofs, 
choosing, rather, to pitch his tent in the patch 
of dishevelled common on the outskirts of the 
village. 

On the morning after his interview with 
the black boar, he was making his purchases 



THE BLACK BOAR 25 

at the village grocery — a "general" shop 
which sold also hardware, dry goods, and pat- 
ent medicines, and gave a sort of disapprov- 
ing harbourage to the worldly postoffice — 
when Morgan Fluellyn dropped in, nodded 
non-committally, and sat down on a keg of 
nails. To Peddler the bad-tempered little 
Welshman was less obnoxious than most of his 
fellow-villagers, both because he was so far 
human as to smoke tobacco, and because his 
reputation and self-satisfaction had been dam- 
aged by the episode of the pedigree boar. 
There was little tenderness toward damaged 
goods, or anything else, in Lonesome Water, 
so the woodsman felt almost friendly toward 
Fluellyn. 

"What'll ye be givin' me," he inquired, 
proffering his plug of choice tobacco, "ef I 
git yer pig back fer ye?" 

Fluellyn so far forgot himself as to spring 
eagerly to his feet. His fringe of red whisker 
fairly curled forward to meet Peddler's sug- 
gestion. If he could restore the precious ani- 
mal to the community, his prestige would 



26 THE SECRET TRAILS 

be re-established. Moreover, his own sore 
shaken self-esteem would lift its head and 
flourish once again. 

"I'd pay ye right well, Jo Peddler," he de- 
clared, forgetting his native prudence in a 
bargain. "Can ye do it, man?" 

"I can that," replied Peddler. And the 
storekeeper, with a half-filled kerosene tin in 
his hand, came forward to listen. 

"I'm a poor man," went on Fluellyn, recol- 
lecting himself with a jerk and sitting down 
again on the nail keg. "I'm a poor man, as 
Mr. Perley here'll tell ye, an' I've already 
had to pay for the pig out o' my own pocket. 
An' it's cost me a fearful sum for the doctor. 
But I've said I want the pig back, and I'd pay 
ye well. An' I won't go back on my word. 
What'll ye take now?" 

"I know ye've been playing in hard luck, 
Fluellyn," said the woodsman genially, "an' 
I ain't a-drivin' no bargain. I know what 
that there pig cost ye down to K-ville. But 
he ain't no manner o' use to me. He ain't 
what ye'd call a household pet, as ye'll agree. 



THE BLACK BOAR 27 

I'll find him and ketch him an' deliver him 
to ye, sound in wind an' limb, down here at 
the landin', if ye'll promise to pay me four 
pound fer my trouble when the job's rightly 
done. An' Mr. Perley here's my witness." 

Fluellyn drew a sigh of relief. He thought 
the woodsman a fool to be so moderate, but 
he was not without an inkling of the truth 
that this moderation was due to generosity 
and kindness rather than to folly. To his 
amazement, he felt a prompting to be gener- 
ous himself. 

"Tell ye what I'll do," said he, springing 
up again and grasping Peddler's hand. "If 
ye'll take me along an' let me help ye fix him, 
I'll make it five pound instead o' four. He 
done me bad, an' I'd like to git square." 

"All right," said Peddler, with an under- 
standing grin. 

On the following morning Peddler and Flu- 
ellyn set out for the north shore of the lake. 
They went in a roomy row-boat, and they 
carried with them an assortment of ropes and 
straps. They started very early, just on the 



28 THE SECRET TRAILS 

edge of dawn; for even here, in Lonesome 
Water, were to be found certain spirits so im- 
perfectly regenerate as to be not above curi- 
osity, not above a worldly itching to see the 
outcome of the venture; and Peddler would 
have no marplots about to risk the upsetting 
of his plans. 

When they set out, the unruffled surface 
of the lake lay gleaming in vast, irregular 
breadths and patches of polished steel-grey 
and ethereal ice-blue and miraculous violet- 
silver, so beautiful that Peddler almost shrank 
from breaking the charmed stillness with his 
oars, and even Fluellyn felt strange stirrings 
within him of a long-atrophied sense of beauty. 
The village of Lonesome Water slumbered 
heavily, with windows and hearts alike close 
shut. 

The sun was high in the hot blue when the 
boat, with stealthy oars, crept in among the 
reeds and made a noiseless landing. 

"If ye stir a foot outside the boat till I call 
to ye, Fluellyn, the bargain's off, an' ye kin 
ketch the pig yerself," admonished Peddler 



THE BLACK BOAR 29 

in a whisper, as he stole up the shore with a 
coil of ropes over his left arm and a steel-shod 
canoe-pole in his right hand. 

He kept a wary eye on the thicket which he 
judged to be the black boar's lair, until he 
was close to the foot of the tree in which 
he had previously taken refuge. Then he 
coughed loudly, announcing his presence. 
But there was no response from the thicket. 

"Come out o' that, ye black divil, an' I'll 
truss ye up like a bale 0' hay!" he shouted. 

As if this inducement was something quite 
irresistible, came a sudden crashing, not in 
the thicket he was watching, but in the bushes 
directly behind him, not a dozen paces away. 
Without stopping to look round, he dropped 
his pole and jumped for the tree. 

"Bad luck to ye," he growled, as he gained 
his perch just in time, "taking a feller by sur- 
prise that way!" 

As the beast squealed and ramped below, 
Peddler leaned down from his perch and 
flicked it smartly with one of his lengths of 
rope, till it was jumping up and down and 



3 o THE SECRET TRAILS 

almost bursting with rage. Then, securing 
the rope to a stout branch, he made a slip- 
knot in the end of it and tried to throw it 
over the boar's foreleg. After half a dozen 
failures, he made a lucky cast and instantly 
drew the noose tight. 

Instead of being daunted at this, the boar 
again rushed furiously at the tree, rearing 
himself against it in a repetition of his former 
tactics. This gave Peddler just the chance 
he wanted. 

"That's where ye've made the mistake, 
now," said he sympathetically, and dropped 
another noose well over the beast's snout, be- 
yond the tusks. As he drew it tight, he took 
up the slack of both ropes in a deft hitch over 
the branch; and the boar found itself strung 
up against the trunk, dancing frantically on 
its hind legs, and no longer able even to squeal 
effectively. 

"Maybe ye'll be a mite more civil now," 
mocked Peddler, and dropped lightly from 
his branch to the ground. 

In half a minute he had whipped the frantic 



THE BLACK BOAR 31 

boar's two front legs together, also its two hind 
legs, run a sliding rope from the one pair to 
the other, and muzzled the formidable jaws 
more securely with a leather skate-strap. 
Then he freed the ropes from above and low- 
ered his prisoner carefully to the ground, 
where it struggled madly till he drew its fore 
legs and hind legs close together by means of 
the sliding rope. Thus trussed up, it seemed 
at last to realize its defeat, and lay still upon 
its side, breathing heavily, which, indeed, was 
about the only form of activity left to it. 
Peddler stood off and surveyed his captive 
benignantly as he filled his pipe. "Fluellyn," 
he called, "ye kin come now an' have a talk 
with yer pig!" 

With a bound, Fluellyn came up the bank, 
burning to avenge his humiliations, his cheeks 
glowing in their halo of crisp red whisker. 
But at sight of the great boar lying trussed up 
so ignobly his face fell. 

"Why didn't ye let me have a hand in the 
job?" he demanded resentfully. 

"Sorry," said Peddler, "but it couldn't be 



32 THE SECRET TRAILS 

done nohow. Ye'd hev spiled the whole 
game, an' like as not got yer gizzard ripped. 
Now yeVe got him, I allow ye hain't got naw- 
thin' to grumble at." And he waited curi- 
ously to see what the little Welshman would 
do to relieve his feelings. 

But Fluellyn, with all his faults, was not 
the man to kick a fallen foe. For some mo- 
ments he eyed the helpless black monster with 
so sinister a gaze that Peddler thought he was 
devising some cruel vengeance, and made 
ready to interfere, if necessary. But all Flu- 
ellyn did, in the end, was to go over and seat 
himself comfortably on the great beast's pant- 
ing flank and proceed to fill his pipe. 

"It's goin' to be a hefty job a-gettin' him 
into the boat," said he at length, sternly re- 
pressing the note of exultation that would 
creep into his voice. 



The Dog that saved the Bridge 
I 

THE old canal lay dreaming under the 
autumn sun, tranquil between its green 
banks and its two rows of stiffly-rimmed bor- 
dering poplars. Once a busy highway for 
barges, it was now little more than a great 
drainage ditch, with swallow and dragon-flies 
darting and flashing over its seldom ruffled 
surface. Scattered here and there over the 
fat, green meadows beyond its containing 
dykes, fat cows lay lazily chewing the cud. 

It was a scene of unmarred peace. To the 
cows nothing could have seemed more impreg- 
nable than their security. Off south-westward 
and southward, to be sure, the horizon was 
columned, decoratively but ominously, by pil- 
lars of dense smoke, sharp against the tur- 
quoise sky. But such phenomena, however 
novel, failed to stir the cows to even the mild- 

33 



34 THE SECRET TRAILS 

est curiosity. The spacious summer air, how- 
ever, was entertaining a strange riot of noises. 
It thumped and throbbed and thundered. It 
seemed to be ripped across from time to time 
with a dry, leisurely sound of tearing. Again, 
it would be suddenly shattered with enormous 
earth-shaking crashes. But all this foolish 
tumult was in the distance, and it gave the 
cows not the slightest concern. It had not 
interfered with the excellent quality of the 
pasturage ; it had not disturbed the regularity 
of milking-time. 

Strategically considered, the lazy old canal 
led from nowhere to nowhere, and the low 
levels through which it ran were aside from 
the track of the fighting. The peasant folk 
on their little farms still went about their busi- 
ness, but very quietly and with lowered voices, 
as if hoping thus to avoid the eye of Fate. 

Along the grass-grown towpath, marching 
in half-sections, came a tiny detachment of 
long-coated Belgian riflemen with a machine- 
gun. The deadly little weapon, on its two- 
wheeled toy carriage, was drawn by a pair of 



THE DOG 35 

sturdy, brindled dogs — mongrels, evidently, 
showing a dash of bull and a dash of retriever 
in their make-up. They were not as large as 
the dogs usually employed by the Belgians in 
this kind of service, but they were strong, and 
keen on their job. Digging their strong toes 
into the turf, they threw their weight valiantly 
into the straps, and pressed on, with tongues 
hanging out and what looked like a cordial 
grin on their panting jaws. They seemed des- 
perately afraid of being left behind by their 
quick-marching comrades. 

The little band kept well under the trees 
as they went, lest some far-scouting aeroplane 
should catch sight of them. In the south- 
eastern sky, presently, an aeroplane — a Taube 
— did appear; but it was so distant that the 
young lieutenant in command of the detach- 
ment, after examining it carefully with his 
field-glasses, concluded that it was little likely 
to detect his dark line moving under the trees. 
The Taube, that execrated dove of death, was 
spying over the Belgian trenches, and doubt- 
less daring a hot fire from the Belgian rifles. 



36 THE SECRET TRAILS 

Once it made a wide sweep north-westward, 
rapidly growing larger, and the little band 
under the trees lay down, hiding themselves 
and the gun behind the dyke. Then its flight 
swerved back over the Belgian lines, and the 
commander, lowering his glasses with a deep 
breath of relief, gave the order to march. 
Two minutes later, around the questing aero- 
plane appeared a succession of sudden fleecy 
puffs of smoke, looking soft and harmless as 
cotton-wool. One of these came just before 
the nose of the aeroplane. Next moment the 
machine gave a great swooping dive, righted 
itself, dived again, and dropped like a stone. 

"Thank God for that!" muttered the young 
lieutenant, and his men cheered grimly under 
their breath. 

Three minutes later the detachment came 
to an old stone bridge. Here it halted. The 
men began hastily entrenching themselves 
where they could best command the ap- 
proaches on the other side. The machine- 
gun, lifted from its little carriage, was placed 
cunningly behind a screen of reeds. The two 



THE DOG 37 

dogs, panting, lay down in their harness under 
a thick bush. In an amazingly brief time the 
whole party was so hidden that no one ap- 
proaching from the other side of the canal 
could have guessed there was anything more 
formidable in the neighbourhood than the 
ruminating cows. 

The neglected, almost forgotten, old bridge 
had suddenly leapt into importance. Rein- 
forcements for the sore-pressed division to the 
south-east were being sent around by the north 
of the canal, and were to cross by the bridge. 
The detachment had been sent to guard the 
bridge at all costs from any wide-roving pa- 
trols of Uhlans who might take it into their 
heads to blow it up. In war it is a pretty safe 
principle to blow up any bridge if you are 
quite sure you won't be wanting it yourself. 
The fact that the other side has spared it is 
enough to damn it off-hand. 

The tumult of the far-off gunfire was so 
unremitting that the ears of the bridge-guard 
gradually came to accept it as a mere back- 
ground, against which small, insignificant 



38 THE SECRET TRAILS 

sounds, if sudden and unexpected, became 
strangely conspicuous. The crowing of a 
cock in the farmyard a few fields off, the sharp 
cry of a moorhen, the spasmodic gabbling of 
a flock of fat ducks in the canal — these small 
noises were almost as clearly differentiated as 
if heard in a stark silence. 

For perhaps an hour the detachment had 
lain concealed, when those ominous pillars of 
smoke against the sky were joined suddenly 
by swarms of the little white puffs of cotton- 
wool, and the confused noises redoubled in vio- 
lence. The battle was swaying nearer and 
spreading around a swiftly widening arc of 
the low horizon. Then another aeroplane — 
another bird-like Taube — came in view, dart- 
ing up from a little south of west. The young 
lieutenant, in his hiding-place beside the 
bridge-head clapped his glasses anxiously to 
his eyes. Yes, the deadly flier was heading 
straight for this position. Evidently the Ger- 
mans knew of that out-of-the-way bridge, and 
in their eyes also, for some reason, it had sud- 



THE DOG 39 

denly acquired importance. The Taube was 
coming to see in what force it was held. 

"Spies again I" he grunted savagely, turn- 
ing to explain to his men. 

Flying at a height of only five or six hun- 
dred metres, the Taube flew straight over 
them. There was no longer any use in at- 
tempting concealment. The riflemen opened 
fire upon it furiously as soon as it came within 
range. It was hit several times; but the 
Taube is a steel machine, well protected from 
below, and neither the pilot nor any vital part 
of the mechanism was damaged. It made 
haste, however, to climb and swerve away 
from so hot a neighbourhood. But first, as 
a message of defiance, it dropped a bomb. 
The bomb fell sixty or seventy yards away 
from the bridge back in the meadow, among 
a group of cows. The explosion killed one 
cow and wounded several. The survivors, 
thus rudely shocked out of their indifference, 
stamped off down the field, tails in air and 
bellowing frantically. 



4 o THE SECRET TRAILS 

"That cooks our goose, 55 snapped one of the 
riflemen concisely. 

"Their shells'll be dead on to us in ten min- 
utes' time r " growled another. And all cursed 
soberly. 

"I don't think so," said the young lieuten- 
ant, after a moment's hesitation. "They want 
the bridge, so they won't shell it. But you'll 
see they'll be on to us shortly with their 
mitrailleuse and half a battalion or so, enough 
to eat us up. We've got to get word back 
quick to the General for reinforcements, or 
the game's up.' 5 

"I'll go, my lieutenant," said Jean Ferreol, 
an eager, dark Walloon, springing to his feet. 

The lieutenant did not answer for some mo- 
ments. He was examining through his 
glasses a number of mounted figures, scatter- 
ing over the plains to the rear in groups of 
two and three. Yes, they were Uhlans un- 
questionably. The line of combat was shift- 
ing eastward. 

"No," said he, "you can't go, Jean. You'd 
never get through. The Bosches are all over 



THE DOG 41 

the place back there now. And you wouldn't 
be in time, even if you did get through. I'll 
send one of the dogs." 

He tore a leaf out of his note-book and be- 
gan scribbling. 

"Better send both dogs, my lieutenant," said 
Jan Steen, the big, broad-built Fleming who 
had charge of the machine-gun, unharnessing 
the dogs as he spoke. "Leo's the cleverest, 
and he'll carry the message right; but he won't 
have his heart in the job unless you let Dirck 
go along with him. They're like twins. 
Moreover, the two together wouldn't excite 
suspicion like one alone. One alone the 
Bosches would take for a messenger dog, sure, 
but two racing over the grass might seem to 
be just playing." 

"Bon!" said the young lieutenant. "Two 
strings to our bow." 

He hurriedly made a duplicate of his dis- 
patch. The papers were folded small and 
tied under the dogs' collars. Big Jan spoke a 
few words crisply and decisively in Flemish to 
Leo, who watched his lips eagerly and wagged 



42 THE SECRET TRAILS 

his tail as if to show he understood. Then 
he spoke similarly, but with more emphasis 
and reiteration, to Dirck, at the same time 
waving his arm toward the distant group of 
roofs from which the detachment had come. 
Dirck looked anxiously at him and whined, 
and then glanced inquiringly at Leo, to see if 
he understood what was required of them. 
He was almost furiously willing, but not so 
quick to catch an idea as his more lively yoke- 
fellow. Big Jan repeated his injunctions yet 
again, with unhurried patience, while his 
leader fumed behind him. Jan Steen knew 
well that with a dog, in such circumstances, 
one must be patient though the skies fall. At 
last Dirck's grin widened, his tail wagged 
violently, and his low whining gave way to a 
bark of elation. 

"He's got it," said Jan, with slow satisfac- 
tion. He waved his arm, and the two dogs 
dashed off as if they had been shot out of a 
gun, keeping close along the inner base of the 
dyke. 

"Dirck's got it," repeated Jan, with convic- 



THE DOG 43 

tion, "and nothing will put it out of his head 
till he's done the job." 

II 

SIDE by side, racing wildly like children just 
let out from school, the two dogs dashed off 
through the grass along the base of the dyke. 
Leo, the lighter in build and in colour, and 
the more conspicuous by reason of a white 
fore-leg, was also the lighter in spirits. Glad 
to be clear of the harness and proud of his 
errand, he was so ebullient in his gaiety that 
he could spare time to spring into the air now 
and again and snap at a low-fluttering butter- 
fly. The more phlegmatic Dirck, on the other 
hand, was too busy keeping his errand fixed in 
his mind to waste any interest on butterflies, 
though he was ready enough to gambol a bit 
whenever his volatile comrade frolicked into 
collision with him. 

Soon — Leo leading, as usual — they quitted 
the dyke and started off across the open mead- 
ows toward the hottest of the firing. A couple 
of patrolling Uhlans, some distance ofif to the 



44 THE SECRET TRAILS 

right, caught sight of them, and a bullet 
whined complainingly just over their heads. 
But the other Uhlan, the one who had not 
fired, rebuked his companion for wasting am- 
munition. "Can't you see they're just a 
couple of puppies larking round?" he asked 
scornfully. "Suppose you thought they were 
Red Cross." 

"Thought they might be dispatch dogs, 
Herr Sergeant," answered the trooper depre- 
catingly. 

"Well, they're not, blockhead," grunted the 
cocksure sergeant. And the two rode on, 
heading diagonally toward the canal. 

The dogs, at the sound of the passing bullet, 
had crouched flat to the ground. When the 
sound was not repeated, however, they sprang 
up and continued their journey, Leo, excited 
but not terrified, more inclined to frolic than 
ever, while Dirck, who by some obscure in- 
stinct had realized that the shot was not a 
chance one, but a direct personal attack, kept 
looking back and growling at the pair of 
Uhlans. 



THE DOG 45 

But though Leo, the exuberant, gambolled 
as he ran, he ran swiftly, none the less, so 
swiftly that plodding Dirck had some trouble 
to keep up with him. Ten minutes more, and 
they ran into the zone of fire. Bullets 
hummed waspishly over them, but, after a 
moment's hesitation, they raced on, flattening 
themselves belly to earth. The German in- 
fantry were in position, quite hidden from 
view, some six or seven hundred yards to the 
right. They were firing at an equally invis- 
ible line of Belgians, who were occupying a 
drainage ditch some three hundred yards to 
the left. The two dogs had no way of know- 
ing that the force on their left was a friendly 
one, so they kept straight on beneath the cross- 
fire. Had they only known, their errand 
might have been quickly accomplished. 

A little farther on, the grass-land came to an 
end, and there was a naked, sun-baked stub- 
ble-field to cross. As the two raced out over 
this perilous open space, the battle deepened 
above them. The fire from the Belgian side 
went high over the dogs 7 heads, seeking the 



46 THE SECRET TRAILS 

far-off target of the enemy's prostrate lines. 
But the German fire was sighted for too close 
a range, and the bullets were falling short. 
Here and there one struck with a vicious spat 
close to the runners' feet. Here and there a 
small stone would fly into the air with a sud- 
den inexplicable impulse, or a bunch of stub- 
ble would hop up as if startled from its root- 
hold. A ball just nicked the extreme tip of 
Dirck's tail, making him think a hornet had 
stung him. With a surprised yelp, he turned 
and bit at his supposed assailant. Realizing 
his mistake in a second, he drooped the injured 
member sheepishly and tore on after Leo, who 
had by now got a score of paces ahead. 

Next moment a shrapnel shell burst over- 
head with a shattering roar. Both dogs cow- 
ered flat, shivering. There was a smart pat- 
ter all about them, and little spurts of dust, 
straw, and dry earth darted upwards. The 
shrapnel shell was doubtless a mere stray, an 
ill-calculated shot exploding far from its tar- 
get. But to Leo it seemed a direct attack 
upon himself. And well he knew what was 



THE DOG 47 

the proper thing to do under such circum- 
stances. Partly by instruction, partly by nat- 
ural sagacity, he had assimilated the vital 
precept: "When the firing gets too hot, dig 
yourself in." With his powerful fore-paws 
he attacked the stubble, making the dry earth 
fly as if he were trying to dig out a badger. 
Dirck watched him wonderingly for a moment 
or two, till a venomous swarm of bullets just 
over his head seemed to let light in upon his 
understanding. He fell to copying Leo with 
vehement enthusiasm,. In a brief space each 
dog had a burrow deep enough to shelter him. 
Dirck promptly curled himself up in his, and 
fell to licking his wounded tail. But Leo, 
burning to get on with his errand, kept bob- 
bing up his head every other second to see how 
the bullets were striking. 

Another shrapnel shell burst in the air, but 
farther away than the first, and Leo marked 
where the little spurts of dust arose. They 
were well behind him. The rifle bullets ping- 
ing overhead were higher now, as the Ger- 
mans were getting the range of the Belgian 



48 THE SECRET TRAILS 

line. The coast seemed clear enough. He 
scrambled from his hole and dashed onward 
down the field, yelping for Dirck to follow. 
And Dirck was at his heels in half a second. 

The tiny canal-side village which was the 
goal of these two devoted messengers was by 
this time less than a mile away and straight 
ahead. When they left it with the machine- 
gun that morning, it had seemed a little haven 
of peace. Now the battle was raging all 
about it. The tall church spire, which had 
risen serenely above its embosoming trees, had 
vanished, blown off by a shell. A cottage 
was burning merrily. Those harmless-look- 
ing puffs of cotton-wool were opening out 
plenteously above the clustered roofs. But all 
these things made no difference to these two 
four-footed dispatch-bearers who carried the 
destiny of the bridge beneath their collars. 
They had been ordered to take their dispatches 
to the village, and to the village they would 
go, whether it had become an inferno or not. 

But now the spectacle of the two dogs rac- 
ing desperately toward the village under the 



THE DOG 49 

storm of lead and shell had caught the atten- 
tion of both sides. There was no mistaking 
them now for frolicsome puppies. There 
was no question, either, as to which side they 
belonged to. The German bullets began to 
lash the ground like hail all about them. Leo, 
true to his principles, stopped at a tiny de- 
pression and once more, with feverish eager- 
ness, began to dig himself in. The earth flew 
from his desperate paws. In another minute 
he would have achieved something like cover. 
But a German sharpshooter got the range of 
him exactly. A bullet crashed through his 
sagacious brain, and he dropped, with his 
muzzle between his legs, into his half-dug 
burrow. 

But Dirck, meanwhile, had for once refused 
to follow his leader's example. His goal was 
too near. He saw the familiar uniforms. 
Above the din he could detect the cries and 
calls of encouragement from his people. 
Every faculty in his valiant and faithful being 
bent itself to the accomplishment of his er- 
rand. The bullets raining about him con- 



50 THE SECRET TRAILS 

cerned him not at all. The crash of a shrap- 
nel shell just over him did not even make him 
cock an eye skyward. The shrapnel bullets 
raised jets of dust before and behind him and 
on either side. But not one touched him. He 
knew nothing of them. He only knew his 
lines were close ahead, and he must reach 
them. 

The Belgians cheered and yelled, and 
poured in a concentrated fire on that section 
of the enemy which was attacking the dog. 
For a few seconds that small, insignificant, 
desperate four-footed shape drew upon itself 
the undivided attention of several thousand 
men. It focussed the battle for the moment. 
It was only a brindled dog, yet upon its fate 
hung immense and unknown issues. Every 
one knew now that the devoted animal was 
carrying a message. The Germans suddenly 
came to feel that to prevent the delivery of 
that message would be like winning a battle. 
The Belgians turned a battery from harrying 
a far-off squadron of horse to shell the lines 
opposite, in defence of the little messenger. 







He only knew his lines were close ahead, and he must 

reach them. 



THE DOG 51 

Men fell by the score on both sides to decide 
that unexpected contest. 

And still Dirck raced on, heedless of it all. 

Then, within fifty yards of the goal, he fell. 
A bullet had smashed one of his legs. He 
picked himself up again instantly and hob- 
bled forward, trailing the mangled limb. 
But the moment he fell, a score of riflemen 
had leapt from their lines and dashed out to 
rescue him. Three dropped on the way out. 
Half a dozen more fell on the way back. 
But Dirck, whining and licking his rescuers' 
hands, was carried to shelter behind the mas- 
sive stone wall of the inn yard, where the 
Brigadier and his officers were receiving and 
sending out dispatches. 

An aide drew the message from under 
Dirck's collar and handed it, with a word of 
explanation, to the General. The latter read 
it, glanced at the time on the dispatch and then 
at his watch, and gave hurried orders for 
strong reinforcements to be rushed up to the 
old bridge. Then he looked at Dirck, whose 
shattered leg was being dressed by an orderly. 



52 THE SECRET TRAILS 

"That dog," he growled, "has been worth 
exactly three regiments to us. He's saved the 
bridge and he's saved three regiments from 
being cut off. See that he's well looked after, 
and cured as soon as possible. He's a good 
soldier, and we'll want him again." 



The Calling of the Lop-horned Bull 

I 

THE harvest moon hung globed and 
honey-coloured over the glassy wilder- 
ness lake. In the unclouded radiance the strip 
of beach and the sand-spit jutting out from it 
were like slabs of pure ivory between the mir- 
roring steel-blue of the water and the brocaded 
dark of the richly-foliaged shore. 

Behind a screen of this rich foliage — great 
drooping leaves of water-ash and maple — sat 
the figure of a man with his back against a 
tree, almost indistinguishable in the confusion 
of velvety shadows. His rifle leaning against 
the tree-trunk beside him, a long, trumpet roll 
of birch-bark in his hands, he peered forth 
through the leaves upon the shining stillness, 
while his ears listened so intently that every 
now and then they would seem to catch the 
whisper of his own blood rushing through his 

53 



54 THE SECRET TRAILS 

veins. But from the moonlit wilds came not a 
sound except, from time to time, that vast, 
faint, whispering sigh, inaudible to all but the 
finest ears, in which the ancient forest seems to 
breathe forth its content when there is no wind 
to jar its dreams. 

Joe Peddler had settled himself in a com- 
fortable position in his hiding-place in order 
that he might not have to move. He was out 
to call moose, and he knew the need of still- 
ness. He knew how far and how inexplicably 
the news of an intruder would travel through 
the wild; but he knew also how quickly the 
wild forgets that news, if only the intruder has 
craft enough to efface himself. If only he 
keeps quite still for a time, the vigilant life of 
the wild seems to conclude that he is dead, and 
goes once more about its furtive business. 

Presently Joe Peddler reached out for his 
rifle and laid it across his knees. Then he 
raised the trumpet of birch-bark to his lips and 
uttered through it the strange, hoarse cry of 
the cow-moose calling to her mate. It was a 
harsh note and discordant, a sort of long- 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 55 

drawn, bleating bellow; yet there was a magic 
in its uncouth appeal which made it seem the 
one appropriate voice of those rude but moon- 
enchanted wilds. 

Joe Peddler was such an expert with the 
birch-bark horn that his performance with it 
could deceive not only the bull, but also the 
wary cow, or a cow-stalking bear, or, at 
times, even an experienced and discriminating 
fellow-woodsman. He would call twice or 
thrice, and stop and listen for several minutes, 
confident that on such a glamorous night as 
this he would not have long to wait for a re- 
sponse to his lying call. 

And he had not. When the bull-moose 
comes to the call of the cow, he comes some- 
times noisily and challengingly, with a crash- 
ing of underbrush and a defiant thrashing of 
his great antlers upon branch and tree as he 
pounds through them. At other times he 
comes as softly as the flight of an owl. 

Peddler looked out upon the empty white- 
ness of the beach. He dropped his eyes for 
a second to the velvet shadows beside him, 



56 THE SECRET TRAILS 

where a wood-mouse, blundering almost upon 
his outstretched leg, had fled with a tiny 
squeak of terror. When he looked out again, 
there in the centre of the beach, black and 
huge against the pallid radiance, towered a 
moose bull, with his great overhanging muz- 
zle uplifted as he peered about him in search 
of the utterer of that call. 

The great bull had a noble pair of antlers, 
a head for any hunter to be proud of, but Joe 
Peddler never raised his rifle. Instead of re- 
joicing at this response to his deceitful lure> 
a frown of impatience crossed his face. The 
strict New Brunswick game laws allowed but 
one bull in a season to fall to the rifle of any 
one hunter. Joe Peddler was in search of one 
particular bull. He had no use for the great 
beast towering so arrogantly before him, and 
nothing was further from his thoughts than 
to put a bullet into that wide-antlered head. 

The bull was plainly puzzled at finding no 
cow upon the beach to greet him, after all 
those calls. Presently he grew angry, per- 
haps thinking that a rival had reached the 




Black and huge against the pallid radiance towered a 

moose bull. 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 57 

scene ahead of him. He fell to pawing the 
sand with one great, clacking hoof, grunting 
and snorting so loudly that any rival within 
half a mile of the spot would have heard him 
and hastened to accept the challenge. Then 
he strode up to the nearest bush and began 
thrashing at it viciously with his antlers. 

The disappointed animal now had his back 
toward the thicket wherein Peddler lay hid- 
den. Yielding to his humour, the woodsman 
once more lifted the birch-bark tube to his 
lips, with a sly grin, and gave another call. 

He was hardly prepared for the effect. 
The bull wheeled like a flash, and instantly, 
with not a half second's hesitation, came 
charging upon the thicket at full run. 

The situation was an awkward one, and 
Peddler cursed himself for a blundering idiot. 
He sprang noiselessly to his feet and raised 
his rifle. But first he would try an experi- 
ment, in the hope of saving the beast from his 
bullet. 

"You git out o' that!" he ordered very 
sharply and clearly. "Git, I tell ye!" 



58 THE SECRET TRAILS 

The bull stopped so abruptly that his hooves 
ploughed up the sand. Decidedly there was 
something very strange about that thicket. 
First it gave forth the call of his mate. Then 
it spoke to him with the voice of a man. And 
there was something in that voice that chilled 
him. While one might, perhaps, count ten, 
he stood there motionless, staring at the inex- 
plicable mass of foliage. The arrogant light 
in his eyes flickered down into fear. And 
then, his heart crumbling with panic, he leapt 
aside suddenly with a mighty spring and went 
crashing off through the woods as if all the 
fiends were clawing at his tail. 

Peddler chuckled, stretched himself, and 
settled down to try his luck again. For an- 
other couple of hours he kept it up patiently, 
calling at intervals, and throwing his utmost 
art into the modulations of the raucous tube. 
But never a reply could he charm forth from 
the moonlit solitudes. At last he grew intol- 
erably sleepy. 

"Guess old lop-horn must be off on some 
other beat to-night," he muttered, getting to 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 59 

his feet with a mighty yawn. "It's me fer me 
bunk." And with the rifle under one arm, 
the birch-bark tube under the other, he strode 
off down the shining beach to the alder-fringed 
inlet where his canoe was hidden. 

As he paddled swiftly through the moon- 
light down toward the lower end of the lake, 
where he had his camp on a high, dry knoll 
beside the outlet, Peddler mused upon the ob- 
ject of his quest. It was no ordinary moose, 
however noble of antler, that had brought him 
out here to the remote and all but unknown 
tangle of lakes and swamps which formed the 
source of the north fork of the Ottanoonsis. 
This bull, according to the stories of two In- 
dian trappers, was of a size quite unprece- 
dented in the annals of the modern moose; 
and Peddler, who had seen its mighty hoof- 
prints in the mud beside the outlet, was quite 
ready to credit the tale. They were like the 
tracks of a prehistoric monster. But it was 
not for the stature of him that Peddler was 
hunting the giant bull. According to the 
story of the Indians, the beast's antlers were 



60 THE SECRET TRAILS 

like those of no other bull-moose ever seen. 
The right antler was colossal in its reach and 
spread, a foot or more, at least, beyond the 
record, but quite normal in its shape. The 
left, on the contrary, was not only dwarfed to 
less than half the normal size, but was so fan- 
tastically deformed as to grow downwards in- 
stead of upwards. Of a head such as this, Joe 
Peddler was determined to possess himself 
before some invading sportsman from Eng- 
land or the States should forestall him. 

Arriving at the outlet of the lake, he pulled 
up the canoe at a natural grassy landing-place 
below his camp, and pushed his way some hun- 
dred yards or so along the shore through the 
bushes to a spring which he had discovered 
that morning. Your woodsman will go far 
out of his way to drink at a cold spring, hav- 
ing a distaste for the rather vapid water of the 
lakes and streams. He threw himself flat 
upon the stony brink and reached down his 
thirsty lips. 

But just as he swallowed the first delicious 
gulp of coolness, there came a sudden huge 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 6j 

crashing in the brushwood behind him. In 
one breath he was on his feet. In the next he 
had cleared the pool in a leap, and was fleeing 
madly for the nearest tree, with a moose that 
looked as big as an elephant at his heels. 

The nearest tree, a young birch, was not as 
big as he could have wished, but he was not 
taking time just then to pick and choose. He 
whirled himself round the trunk, sprang to 
the first branch, swung up, and scrambled des- 
perately to gain a safe height. He gained it, 
but literally by no more than a hair's breadth. 
As the black monster reached the tree, it 
checked itself abruptly, and in almost the same 
instant lifted its right fore-hoof high above 
its head and struck like a flash at Peddler's 
foot just disappearing over a branch. It 
missed the foot itself, but it shaved the stout 
cowhide larrigan that covered the foot, slicing 
it as if with a knife. Peddler drew himself 
farther up and then looked down upon his as- 
sailant with interest. 

"I guess I've found ye all right, old lop- 
horn," he drawled, and spat downward, not 



62 THE SECRET TRAILS 

scornfully, but contemplatively, as if in recog- 
nition, upon that strangely stunted and de- 
formed left antler. "But gee! Them Injuns 
never said nothin' about yer bein' so black 
an' so almighty spry. I wisht, now, ye'd 
kindly let me go back to the canoe an' git me 
gun!" 

But any such quixotic courtesy seemed far 
from the giant's intention. As soon as he re- 
alized that his foe was beyond the reach of 
striking hoof or thrusting antler, he set him- 
self, in the pride of his strength and weight, 
to the task of pushing the tree over. Treating 
it as if it were a mere sapling, he reared him- 
self against it, straddling it with his fore-legs, 
and thrust at it furiously in the effort to ride 
it down. As the slim young trunk shook and 
swayed beneath the passion of the onslaught, 
Peddler clung to his perch with both arms 
and devoutly wished that he had had time to 
choose a sturdier refuge. 

For perhaps five minutes the giant pushed 
and battered furiously against the tree, grunt- 
ing like a locomotive and tearing up the earth 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 63 

in furrows with his hinder hooves. At length, 
however, he seemed to conclude that this par- 
ticular tree was too strong for him. He 
backed off a few yards and stood glaring up 
at Peddler among the branches, snorting con- 
temptuously and shaking his grotesquely mis- 
shapen antlers as if daring his antagonist to 
come down. Peddler understood the chal- 
lenge just as clearly as if it had been expressed 
in plainest King's English. 

"Oh, yes," said he grimly, "I'll come down 
all right, bime-by. An' ye ain't agoin' to like 
it one leetle bit when I do; now, mind, I'm 
tellin' ye!" 

For perhaps a half-hour the giant bull con- 
tinued to rave and grunt and paw about the 
tree with a tireless vindictiveness which filled 
his patient prisoner with admiration, and 
hardened him inexorably in his resolve to pos- 
sess himself of that unparalleled pair of ant- 
lers. At last, however, the furious beast 
stopped short and stood motionless, listening 
intently. Peddler wondered what he was 
listening to. But presently his own ears also 



64 THE SECRET TRAILS 

caught it — the faint and far-off call of a cow- 
moose from the upper end of the lake. For- 
getting his rage against Peddler, the bull 
wheeled about with the agility of a cat and 
went crashing off up the lake shore as fast as 
he could run. Stiff and chilled — for the air 
of that crisp October night had a searching 
bite in it — Peddler climbed down from his 
perch. First, being tenacious of purpose, he 
hurried to the spring and finished his inter- 
rupted drink. Then, returning to the canoe, 
he stood for a few moments in hesitation. 
Should he follow up the trail at once? But 
it was already near morning, and he was both 
dead-tired and famished. He believed that 
the bull, not being in any alarm, would not 
journey far that night after meeting his mate, 
but rather would seek some deep thicket for 
a few hours' sleep. He picked up the rifle 
and strode off to his camp, resolved to fortify 
himself well for a long trail on the morrow. 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 65 

II 

Wise though Peddler was in the ways of the 
wild folk, he found himself at fault in regard 
to this particular bull, whose habits seemed 
to be no less unique than his stature and his 
antlers. Taking up the trail soon after sun- 
rise, he came in due time to the spot, near the 
head of the lake, where the bull had joined 
the calling cow. From this point the trail 
of the pair had struck straight back from the 
lake towards the range of low hills which 
formed the watershed between the eastern and 
south-westward flowing streams. About noon 
Peddler came to the place where the cow, 
wearied out by so strenuous a pace, had lain 
down to sleep in a thicket The bull, how- 
ever, driven by his vehement spirit, had gone 
on without a pause. 

All day Peddler followed doggedly upon 
that unwavering trail. He crossed the ridge, 
descended to the broken and desolate eastern 
levels, and came, towards sunset, upon another 
wide and tranquil lake. Feeling sure that his 



66 THE SECRET TRAILS 

quarry, unaware of the pursuit, would linger 
somewhere about this pleasant neighbourhood, 
Peddler found himself a mossy nest on the 
cup-shaped top of a boulder and settled down 
for a couple of hours' sleep. He little guessed 
that the bull, having doubled back on a paral- 
lel with his own trail, had been following him 
stealthily for a good half hour, not raging 
now, but consumed with curiosity. 

Just as the moon was rising over the low 
black skyline, jagged with fir-tops, Peddler 
woke up. Creeping through the bushes, he 
betook himself to a hiding-place which his 
quick eye had already marked down, close to 
the beach, a roomy, flat ledge at the foot of a 
rock, with a screen of young spruce before it. 
From behind another clump of spruce, not 
fifty paces distant, the lop-horned bull, stand- 
ing moveless as a dead tree, watched him with 
an intense and inquiring interest. His fury 
of the preceding night, and even the memory 
of it, seemed to have been blotted from his 
mind. 

But when, a few minutes later, from that 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 67 

shadowy covert, where he could just make out 
the crouching form of the man, the call of a 
cow breathed forth upon the stillness, the 
great bull's eyes and nostrils opened wide in 
amazement. What could a moose-cow be 
thinking about to remain so near the danger- 
ous neighbourhood of a man? But, no, his 
eyes assured him that there was no cow in the 
man's hiding-place. Where, then, could she 
be? He stared around anxiously. She was 
nowhere in sight. He sniffed the windless 
night air. It bore no savour of her. He 
waved forward his great, sensitive ears to 
listen. And again came the call, the voice, 
undoubtedly, of the moose-cow. 

There could be no question about it this 
time. It came from the thicket. Had there 
been any least note of fear in that call, the 
giant bull would have rushed at once to the 
rescue of the unseen fair, concluding that the 
man had her hidden. But now, the utterance 
was simply that of an untroubled cow. 
Therefore, for the moment, the great bull was 
chiefly puzzled. Keeping within the shad- 



68 THE SECRET TRAILS 

ows, and moving as imperceptibly as if he 
were himself but one of the blackest of them, 
he stole nearer and nearer yet, till he could 
plainly see every detail within the man's hid- 
ing-place. There was assuredly nothing there 
but rock and moss and bush and the crouching 
figure of the man himself, staring forth upon 
the moonlit beach and holding a curious roll 
of bark to his mouth. Nevertheless, in that 
same moment there came again the hoarse cry 
of the cow. 

It came indisputably from that crouching 
form of a man, from that roll of bark at the 
man's mouth. 

This was a mystery, and the wiry black hair 
along the neck and shoulders of the bull be- 
gan to rise ominously. A slow, wondering 
rage awoke in his heart. It was that element 
of wonder alone which for the moment re- 
strained him from rushing forward and tram- 
pling the mysterious cheat beneath his hooyes. 
A red spark kindled in his eyes. 

All undreaming of the dread watcher so 
close behind him, Peddler set his lips to the 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 69 

lying tube of bark and gave his call again 
and yet again, with all the persuasiveness of 
his backwoods art. He felt sure that his ef- 
forts were convincing. They were, indeed, 
all of that. They were so consummate a ren- 
dering of the cow-moose's voice that they per- 
fectly convinced a huge and hungry bear, 
which was at that moment creeping up from 
the other side of the rock upon the unsuspect- 
ing hunter's hiding-place. 

The bear knew that its only chance of 
capturing so swift and nimble a quarry as the 
moose-cow lay in stealing upon her like a cat 
and taking her by surprise in one instantane- 
ous rush. He never doubted for a moment 
that the cow was there behind the rock. 
When he was within a dozen feet of those 
persuasive sounds, his crouched form sud- 
denly rose up, elongated itself like a dark and 
terrible jack-in-the-box, and launched itself 
with a swish through the encircling branches. 

Before Peddler's wits had time fully to 
take in what was happening, his trained in- 
stinct told him what to do. Half rising to 



70 THE SECRET TRAILS 

his feet as he snatched up his rifle, he swung 
about and fired from the hip at the vague but 
monstrous shape which hung for an instant 
above him. The shot went wide, for just as 
his finger pressed the trigger, a great black 
paw smote the weapon from his grasp and 
hurled it off among the bushes. 

With a contortion that nearly dislocated his 
neck, Peddler hurled himself frantically 
backwards and aside, and so just escaped the 
pile-driver descent of the other paw. 

He escaped it for the instant; but in the 
effort he fell headlong, and jammed himself in 
a crevice of the rock so awkwardly that he 
could not at once extricate himself. He 
drew up his legs with an involuntary shudder, 
and held his breath, expecting to feel the 
merciless claws rake the flesh from his thighs. 

But nothing touched him; and the next mo- 
ment there broke out an astounding uproar 
behind him, a very pandemonium of roars 
and windy gruntings, while the crashing of 
the bushes was as if the forest were being 
subdued beneath a steam-roller. Consumed 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 71 

with amazement, he wrenched himself from 
the crevice and glanced round. The sight 
that met his eyes made him clamber hastily 
to the top of the rock, whence he might look 
down from a more or less safe distance upon 
a duel of giants such as he had never dared 
hope to witness. 

When the bear found that it was no cow- 
moose, but a man that he was springing upon, 
he was so taken aback that, for a second or 
two, he forbore to follow up his advantage. 
To those two seconds of hesitation Joe Ped- 
dler owed his escape. 

Before the massive brute, now boiling with 
rage at having been so deceived, had suffi- 
ciently made up his mind to fall upon that 
prostrate figure in the crevice, something that 
seemed to him like a tornado of hooves and 
antlers burst out of the bushes and fell upon 
him. The next moment, with a long, red 
gash half-way down his flank, he was fighting 
for his life. 

The gigantic moose had been just upon the 
verge of rushing in to silence those incompre- 



72 THE SECRET TRAILS 

hensible and deceiving calls, when the tower- 
ing form of the bear burst upon his vision. 
Here at last was something to focus his wrath. 
Already angry, but still dampened by bewil- 
derment, his anger now exploded into a very 
madness of rage. There was the ancient, in- 
herited feud between his tribe and all bears. 
As a youngster, he had more than once es- 
caped, as by a miracle, from the neck-break- 
ing paw of a bear, had more than once seen 
a young cow struck down and ripped to 
pieces. Now to this deep-seated hate was 
added another incentive. His mind confused 
by fury to protect his mate, he dimly felt that 
the mystery which had been tormenting him 
was the fault of this particular bear. The 
man was forgotten. A cow had been calling 
to him. She had disappeared. Here was 
the bear. The bear had probably done away 
with the cow. The cow should be terribly 
avenged. 

The bear — which was one of the biggest 
and fiercest of his kind in all the northern 
counties — had fought moose, both bulls and 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 73 

cows, before. But he had never before faced 
such an antagonist as this one, and that first 
slashing blow from the bull's knife-edged 
fore-hoof had somewhat flurried him. Sit- 
ting back poised, with his immense hind- 
quarters gathered under him, and his fore- 
paws uplifted, he parried the smashing strokes 
of his assailant with the lightning dexterity 
of a trained boxer. His strength of shoulder 
and forearm was so enormous that if he could 
have got a stroke in flat, at right angles to the 
bone, he would have shattered the bull's leg 
to splinters. But his parrying blows struck 
glancingly, and did no more than rip the hair 
and hide. 

After a few minutes of whirlwind effort to 
batter down that impregnable guard, the bull 
jumped back as nimbly, for all his bulk, as a 
young doe startled from her drinking. His 
usual method of attack, except when fighting 
a rival bull, was to depend upon his battering 
fore-hooves. But now he changed his tactics. 
Lowering his head so that his vast right antler 
stood out before him like a charge of bayo- 



74 THE SECRET TRAILS 

nets, he launched himself full upon his ad- 
versary. 

With all his weight and strength behind it, 
that charge was practically irresistible, if 
fairly faced. But the bear was too wise to 
face it fairly. He swung aside, clutched the 
lowered antler, and held fast, striving to pull 
his enemy down. 

But the bull's strength and impetus were 
too great, and the bear was himself thrown 
off his balance. Even then, however, he 
might probably have recovered himself and 
once more established the battle upon even 
terms. But he had not reckoned — he could 
not have been expected to reckon — upon the 
unprecedented weapon of that little down- 
drooping left antler. Not for nothing was 
the giant bull lop-horned. The dwarfed and 
distorted antler hung down like a plough- 
share. And the bear attempted no defence 
against it. Keen-spiked, it caught him in the 
belly and ploughed upward. In a paroxysm 
he fell backwards. The bull, swinging his 
hindquarters around without yielding his ad- 



THE LOP-HORNED BULL 75 

vantage for a second, lunged forward with all 
his force, and the deadly little plough was 
driven home to the bear's heart. 

Peddler, from his post on top of the rock, 
shouted and applauded in wild excitement, 
and showered encomiums, no less profane 
than heartfelt, upon the victorious bull. For 
a minute or two the bull paid no attention, 
being engrossed in goring and trampling his 
victim in an effort to make it look less like a 
bear than an ensanguined floor-rug. At last, 
as if quite satisfied with his triumph, he lifted 
his gory head and eyed that voluble figure on 
top of the rock. It looked harmless. 

"Gee, but ye kin fight!" said Peddler, glow- 
ing with admiration. "An' ye've saved my 
scalp fer me this night, fer sartain. Guess 
I'll hev to let ye keep them lop-sided horns 
0' yourn, after all!" 

The bull snorted at him scornfully and 
turned his head to take another prod at the 
unresponsive remnants of his foe. Then, 
paying no further heed to the man on the 
rock, and craving assuagement to the fiery 



76 THE SECRET TRAILS 

smart of his wounds, he strode down into the 
lake and swam straight out, in the glitter of 
the moon-path, toward the black line of the 
farther shore. 



The Aigrette 

THE Girl, sitting before her dressing- 
table, looked at the fair reflection in 
her great mirror and smiled happily. Those 
searching lights at either side of the mirror 
could find no flaw in the tender colouring of 
her face, in the luminous whiteness of neck 
and arm and bosom. Her wide-set eyes, like 
the red bow of her mouth, were kind and gay. 
The brightness of her high-coiffed hair was 
surmounted by a tuft of straight egret plumes, 
as firm, pearl-white, and delicate as a filigree 
of frost. 

The Girl had never looked so lovely. 
Never before had she worn anything that so 
became her as that ethereal plume. She 
knew it; and the glances of her maid, stray- 
ing from her business with filmy garments 
and dainty adornments, told her so. She 
threw a wisp of silken gossamer over her arm 

77 



78 THE SECRET TRAILS 

and tripped eagerly down to the drawing- 
room. 

The Man came forward to meet her, his 
eyes paying without stint the tribute she was 
craving of him. 

"There will be no one there to compare 
with you!" he said softly. "There is no one 
anywhere to compare with you." 

"It is becoming, isn't it?" she answered, 
glowing at his praise, and nodding her bright 
head to indicate the ethereal white plume. 

"It is indeed," he asserted heartily. "But 
nothing could heighten your beauty. You 
did not need it, and I'm rather afraid the bird 
did." He kissed her finger-tips as he spoke, 
lest she should think he was being critical. 

The Girl pouted a little, being very tender- 
hearted, and loth to be reminded of unpleas- 
ant things. 

"I know what you mean," said she quickly, 
withdrawing her hand in displeasure. "But 
the poor bird is dead, anyway; and if I didn't 
buy the thing, some other woman would. 
And it's horrid of you to speak of it now!" 



THE AIGRETTE 79 

The Man laughed. 

"It can't make you more beautiful, but if 
it makes you happier, that's quite enough for 
me," said he. "I'm afraid that a very little 
pleasure for you is of more consequence in my 
eyes than a thousand million birds." 

And upon this assurance the Girl forgave 
him. 

• •••••• 

The wide lagoon lay windless, shining like 
milky-blue glass under the blaze of the south- 
ern sky. It was shallow, its surface broken 
here and there with patches of tall gold-green 
reeds. Its shores seemed half afloat, fringed 
as they were with gnarled, squat bushes grow- 
ing directly out of the water. This irregular 
bushy growth, with the green-shadowed water 
beneath its branches, stretched back for sev- 
eral hundred yards from the open lagoon to 
a dense wall of jungle, a banked mass of vio- 
lently green leafage starred with cream-white 
and crimson bloom. 

Not cream-white, but of a coldly pure 
silver-white, like new snow, some two or three 



80 THE SECRET TRAILS 

score long-necked, long-legged birds flapped 
angularly between the milky blue of the water 
and the intense, vibrant blue of the sky, or 
stood half-leg deep in the shallows, motion- 
less, watching for their prey. They looked 
like bits of a Japanese screen brought to life 
and sown broadcast in this sun-steeped south- 
ern wilderness. High overhead, a black 
speck against the azure, a hawk wheeled 
slowly in vast spirals, staring down desirously 
upon the peaceful lagoon. That peace he 
durst not invade, for he knew and feared the 
lightning strokes of the long dagger-like 
beaks of the white egrets. 

In the top of one of the gnarled bushes at 
the edge of the open, right over the water, 
was built a spacious but rickety-looking nest 
of dead sticks. It was the most un-nestlike 
of nests, a mere crazy platform, with no 
apparent qualifications as a home except the 
most perfect ventilation. One might reason- 
ably suppose that the first requirement in the 
nest of a bird should be that it would hold 
eggs securely. But this unsightly collection 



THE AIGRETTE 81 

of sticks looked as if that was the last thing 
it could be depended on to do. It was so 
loose and open that the eggs ought to fall 
through into the water. It was so flat that 
any eggs which dodged falling through should 
surely, according to all known laws of Na- 
ture, be blown off by the first vigorous gust. 
Nevertheless, it was clear that the rude struc- 
ture had held eggs, and proved not unworthy 
of its trust, for it was now occupied by four 
young egrets. 

They were grotesque and solemn babies, 
these nestlings, sitting up quite motionless on 
their leg-joints and half-feathered rumps, 
with their long legs thrust straight out before 
them over the sticks, their long beaks resting 
contemplatively on their nearly naked breasts, 
their round, bright, unwinking eyes staring 
out blankly upon their little world of gold 
and blue. Scattered here and there over the 
sweep of fringing bushes were a dozen or so 
more of these rickety platforms of sticks, each 
with its solemn group of stilt-legged staring 
young, motionless as statues interested in 



82 THE SECRET TRAILS 

nothing upon earth save the quantity of fish 
or frogs which their untiring parents could 
supply to their unassuageable appetites. 

Above this outermost nest, with the four 
fledglings in it, hung for a moment, hovering 
on wide wings, the great white mother egret, 
with a shining orange fish in her beak. She 
dropped her long legs, as if feeling for a foot- 
hold, and alighted on the edge of the crazy 
platform so softly that not a stick protested. 
At her coming four long beaks were lifted 
into the air, gaping hungrily and squawking 
with eagerness. All four seemed equally 
ravenous. But the mother-bird knew well 
enough which she had fed last, and which was 
most in need. She jammed the prize, with 
what seemed scant ceremony, into the beak 
whose turn it was to get it. The fish was 
thicker than the youngster's long thin neck, 
but it was promptly swallowed head first. It 
went down slowly, with a succession of spasms 
which looked agonizing, but were, in fact, 
ecstatic. 

Before flying off again to resume her quest 



THE AIGRETTE 83 

of fish, the mother egret remained for a few 
moments on the edge of the nest, to rest 
and preen herself. Her snow-pure plumage 
shone in the sunlight like spun silver. Her 
neck feathers were prolonged in fine droop- 
ing lines far down over her breast. From 
the centre of her back, between the shoulders, 
grew a bunch of long, exquisitely delicate 
plumes, as white and apparently as fragile as 
the frost-flowers on a window. These were 
her festal adornment, worn, by herself and 
her mate alike, only in the nesting season. 

Having preened herself well, and shaken 
her long, snaky neck as if to take the kinks 
out of it, she spread her shining wings and 
lifted herself into the air. She rose, how- 
ever, but a few inches, and then, flapping and 
squawking wildly, she was dragged down 
again by some unseen force. Her frantic 
struggles knocked off a corner of the nest, 
and swept off one of the awkward nestlings, 
which fell kicking and sprawling through the 
leafage and disappeared with a splash. A 
moment more and the mother, for all her 



84 THE SECRET TRAILS 

wild fight against the unseen fate, was drawn 
down after him into the shadowed water. 
Then a little flat-bottomed boat, or ducking- 
punt, with a man crouching in the bottom of 
it, came worming its way through the narrow 
lane of water between the stems of the bushes. 
The man seized her by the dangerous beak, 
jerked her into the punt, put his knee upon 
her neck, detached the noose of a copper-wire 
snare from her leg, drew a keen hunting- 
knife, and deftly sliced the snowy plumes 
from the flesh of her back. 

Then he hurled her out into the open water, 
that she might not be in his way while he 
rearranged the snare upon the edge of the 
nest in order to catch her mate. 

Half stunned, and altogether bewildered by 
her agony, the mother egret flapped blindly 
upon the top of the water, her snowy plum- 
age crimsoned with her life-blood. After a 
few moments she succeeded in getting into the 
air. Flying heavily, and lurching as she 
went, she flew across the lagoon, blundered 
in among the bushes, and fell with her legs 




The mother egret flapped blindly upon the top of the water. 



THE AIGRETTE 85 

in the water, her twitching wings entangled in 
the branches. There, after a few vain strug- 
gles, she lay still, dying slowly — very slowly 
— her beak half open, but her eyes wide and 
undaunted. 

Not long afterwards the male egret, who 
had been fishing far down the lagoon, and 
knew nothing of what had happened, came 
back to the nest with food. He, too, was 
caught in the fatal snare, dragged down, 
scalped of his nuptial plumes as the red sav- 
age of old scalped his enemies, and thrown 
away to die at his leisure. The law of that 
country forbade the shooting of the egrets in 
the nesting season, when alone they wore 
the plumes which women crave. The plume- 
hunter, therefore, felt that he was evading the 
law successfully if he hacked the prize from 
the living bird and released it while still alive 
and able to fly. If the bird died agonizingly 
afterwards, who was going to swear that he 
was the slayer? 

Throughout the morning the like swift 
tragedy was enacted at one nest after the 



86 THE SECRET TRAILS 

other. The deadly punt slid murderously, 
silently, up and down the hidden water-lanes 
among the bushes, and the man with the knife 
did his work noiselessly, save for the thresh- 
ing and splashing of his victims. 

In the course of an hour, however, for all 
the marauder's stealth, the whole herony was 
in a state of desperate fear. Half a dozen 
birds had been snared, and the others, flying 
high overhead and staring down with keen, 
terrified eyes, had detected the slaughterer in 
his hiding under the branches. They had 
seen him, too, resetting his snares upon the 
edges of the nests. And in spite of the fact 
that, after doing so, he withdrew to some dis- 
tance among the bushes — as far as the cords 
attached to the snares would permit — they 
dreaded to approach their nests again. But 
there were their younglings, solemn and 
hungry, quite uncomprehending of the doom 
which hung over them, hoarsely and trust- 
ingly petitioning to be fed. The parent birds 
could not long resist those appeals. Love 
and tenderness triumphed over fear, even 



THE AIGRETTE 87 

over the clear view of mortal peril. One 
after another the great white birds came back, 
trembling but devoted, to their nests. One 
after another, sooner or later, got a foot into 
that implacable wire noose, was dragged 
down beneath the bushes, and thrown out 
weltering in its blood. There was no escaping 
a trap thus baited with the appeals of the 
young. And before the lagoon had taken the 
first of the sunset colour, there was not one 
adult egret in the whole herony which had 
not paid the bloody price of its devotion. 

At last, when the lagoon lay like a sheet of 
burnished copper, the man with the punt 
came out boldly from among the bushes and 
paddled off toward the outlet with his bleed- 
ing trophies. As he vanished, three or four 
birds, stronger and more tenacious of life than 
their fellows, came flapping back to their 
nests, their backs and wings and thighs caked 
with blood. Swaying as they perched upon 
the stick platforms, they managed to feed the 
nestlings once more. Then, dogged in their 
devotion, they flew off to continue their tasks. 



88 THE SECRET TRAILS 

They never returned again, but fell in the 
shallows where they stood trying to fish: and 
if the Fates of the wilderness elected to be 
merciful, they were drowned quickly. 

All night, through the star-strewn summer 
dark, the orphaned nestlings kept up their 
harshly plaintive cries of hunger and loneli- 
ness. A pair of owls, hearing these cries, 
and guessing that all could not be right with 
the egret colony, came winnowing up noise- 
lessly and took toll of the defenceless nests. 
After daybreak, the wheeling hawk dropped 
low to investigate, then struck wherever he 
found the nestlings fattest and most tempting. 
Toward noon, under the pitiless downpour of 
the unclouded sun, the little ones wilted like 
cut grass, thirst and hunger stilling their piti- 
ful complaints. Long before night there was 

not a nestling left alive on the whole lagoon. 
....... 

The Girl, with snowy aigrette in her bright 
hair, her gloved fingers resting on the Man's 
arm, stood upon the kerb outside the theatre, 
waiting for a taxi. A light dogcart came by. 



THE AIGRETTE 89 

The horse, sleek and spirited and spoilt, was 
in wayward humour, and took it into its head 
to give its driver trouble. The driver tried 
to soothe it, but it would not be soothed. It 
began backing capriciously. The driver cut 
it smartly with his light whip. 

"Oh," cried the Girl, "see how he's beating 
that poor horse! What a brute!" 

"It's hurting the horse about as much," 
said the Man, "as if you struck it with your 
fan! Moreover, the horse is behaving very 
badly, and must be made to mind. It's en- 
dangering the whole traffic." 

The Girl flushed, bit her lip, and with- 
drew her hand from the Man's arm. Just 
then the summoned taxi drew up at the kerb. 
The Girl stepped in. 

"What brutes men are!" she said. "Per- 
haps they can't help being cruel ! They have 
no intuition, so how can they understand?" 

The Man glanced at the aigrette, smiled 
discreetly, and said nothing. 



The Cabin in the Flood 

STEPPING into the cabin, Long Jackson 
said: "If that there blame jam don't 
break inside o' twenty-four hour, the hull val- 
ley's goin' to be under water, an' I'll hev to 
be gittin' ye out o' this in the canoe. I've 
just been uncoverin' her an' rozenin' her up, 
an' she's as good as noo. That's a fine piece 
o' winter bark ye put on to her, Tom." 

From his bunk in the dark corner beyond 
the stove, Brannigan lifted his shaggy face 
and peered wistfully out into the sunshine 
with sunken but shining eyes. 

"I was afeard there'd be a powerful freshet 
after this long spell o' thaw atop of all that 
rain, Long, an' the snow layin' so deep in the 
woods this winter. I wisht ye'd lug me over 
an' lay me by the door in the sun fer a bit, 
Long, ef 'tain't too much trouble. That 'ere 

sun'll put new life into me bones, in case the 

90 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 91 

jam don't break, an' we hev to git a move 



on." 



After this long speech, Brannigan's head 
dropped wearily back on the roll of blanket 
that served him as pillow. He had been des- 
perately ill with pneumonia, so ill that it had 
been impossible for Long Jackson to go in to 
the Settlements for a doctor; and now, under 
Jackson's assiduous nursing, he was just be- 
ginning the slow climb back to life. 

"Think 'twon't be too cold fer ye by the 
door?" queried Jackson anxiously. 

"No, no!" protested Brannigan. "It's the 
sun I'm wantin', and the smell o' spring stir- 
rin' in the buds. That's the med'cine fer me 
now, Long." 

Long Jackson grumbled doubtfully, hold- 
ing to the strange back-country superstition 
that fresh air is dangerous for sick folk. But 
he yielded, as he usually did where Branni- 
gan was concerned. He spread blankets on 
the floor by the door — a little to one side to 
avoid the draught — then carried his partner's 
gaunt form over to them, and rolled him up 



92 THE SECRET TRAILS 

like a baby, with his head well propped on 
a pile of skins. Then he seated himself on 
the chopping-log just outside the door, and 
proceeded to fill his pipe with that moist, 
black plug tobacco, good alike for smoking 
and for chewing, which is chiefly favoured by 
the backwoodsman. Brannigan's face, drink- 
ing in the sunshine as a parched lawn drinks 
rain, freshened and picked up a tinge of col- 
our. His eyes, long weary of the four grey 
walls of the cabin, roved eagerly the woods 
that fringed the tiny clearing. 

"Anyways," said Long Jackson between 
puffs, as he sucked the damp tobacco alight, 
"this here knoll of ourn's the highest bit o' 
country fer ten miles round, and the cabin's 
on the highest p'int of it. 'Tain't raly likely 
the water'll come clean over it, ef the jam 
don't give inside o' twenty- four hour. But it 
makes one feel kind o' safe havin' the canoe 
ready." 

"Yes, it's the highest bit o' country fer miles 
round," murmured Brannigan dreamily, soak- 
ing in the sun. "An' I'm thinkin' we ain't 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 93 

the only ones as knows it, Long. Will ye 
look at them rabbits down yander? • Did ever 
ye see so many o' them together afore?" 

Jackson looked, and involuntarily laid his 
pipe down on the log beside him to look 
again. The woods far down the slope — it 
was a slope so gentle as to be hardly percep- 
tible — were swarming with rabbits, hopping 
and darting this way and that over the snow. 
For the snow still lingered under the trees, 
though only a few patches of it, yellowing and 
shrinking under the ardent sun, remained in 
the open of the clearing. 

After staring for some moments in silence, 
Jackson took up his pipe again. 

"The water must be risin' mighty quick," 
said he. "Them rabbits are gittin' sociable 
all of a sudden. They're comin' to pay ye a 
call, Tom, this bein' yer fust day up." 

"We'll be havin' other callers besides 
rabbits, I'm thinkin'," said Brannigan, the 
dreaminess in his voice and eyes giving way 
to a pleased excitement. This was better than 
his bunk in the dark corner of the cabin. 



94 THE SECRET TRAILS 

"What's that, now, way down behind them 
yaller birch trunks?" he added eagerly. "I 
guess it's a bear, Long." 

"It's two bear," corrected Jackson. "So 
long as it's jest rabbits, all right, but we ain't 
entertainin' bears this mornin'. Grub's too 
scarce, an' bears is hungry this time o' year. 
Gee! There's two more down by the spring. 
Guess I'd better git the gun." 

"Wait a bit, Long," expostulated Branni- 
gan. "They're so afeard o' the water, they'll 
be harmless as the rabbits. No good shootin' 
'em now, when their pelts ain't worth the 
skinnin'. Let 'em be, an' see what they'll do. 
They hain't got no place else to go to, to git 
out o' the water." 

"Let 'em climb a tree!" grumbled Jackson. 
But he sat down again on his log. "Ye're 
right, anyhow, Tom," he continued, after a 
moment's consideration. "What's the good o' 
spilin' good skins by shootin' 'em now? An' 
if they're not too skeered to death to know 
they're hungry, they kin eat the rabbits. An', 
anyhow, the ca'tridges is pretty nigh gone. 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 95 

Come along, Mr. Bear, an' bring yer wife an' 
all yer relations!" 

As if in response to this invitation, the bears 
all moved a little nearer, whining uneasily 
and glancing back over their shoulders, and 
close behind them could now be seen gleams 
of the swiftly up-creeping flood, where the 
sunlight struck down upon it through the leaf- 
less hardwood trees. But around to the left 
and the rear of the cabin the trees were dense 
evergreens, spruce and fir, beneath whose 
shade the flood came on unseen. 

As the worried bears approached, the belt 
of rabbits swarmed out along the edges of the 
clearing, the hinder ranks pushing forward 
the reluctant front ones. These, fearing the 
open and the human form sitting before the 
cabin, tried to regain shelter by leaping back 
over the heads of those who thrust them on. 
But far more than that unmoving human 
figure they feared the whimpering bears and 
the silent, pursuing flood. So in a very few 
minutes the rabbits were all in the open, hop- 
ping about anxiously and waving their long 



96 THE SECRET TRAILS 

ears, a few of the bolder ones even coming up 
to within forty or fifty feet of the cabin to 
stare curiously at Long Jackson on his log. 

Presently from behind the cabin, stepping 
daintily, with heads held high and wide nos- 
trils sniffing the air apprehensively, came two 
young does, and stopped short, glancing back 
and forth from Jackson to the bears, from the 
bears to Jackson. After a few seconds' hesi- 
tation, they seemed to make up their minds 
that they liked Jackson better than the bears, 
for they came a few steps nearer and looked 
timidly in at Brannigan. 

"This ain't North Fork Valley, Long. It's 
Barnum's Menagerie, that's what it's gittin' 
to be!" remarked Brannigan, speaking softly, 
lest he should alarm the does. 

"Ay, an' still they come!" said Jackson, 
pointing with his pipe down the slope to the 
right. Brannigan lifted his head and craned 
his neck to see who "they" were. 

They were a huge bull-moose, followed by 
three cows and a couple of yearlings, who 
crowded close upon their leader's heels as 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 97 

they caught sight of the bears. The great 
bull, though without antlers at this season, 
haughtily ignored the bears, who, as he well 
knew, would have small inclination to venture 
within reach of his battering hoofs. The lit- 
tle herd had been swimming. With dripping 
flanks, they stalked up through the trees and 
out into the clearing, the swarm of rabbits 
parting before them like a wave. At sight of 
Jackson on his log, the bull stopped and stood 
staring morosely. He was not afraid of 
bears, but men were another matter. After a 
heavy pondering of the situation, he led the 
way across the corner of the clearing, then 
down into the flood again and off, heading for 
the uplands at the foot of the valley, some five 
or six miles away. 

"He don't seem to like the looks o' ye, 
Long," murmured Brannigan. 

"No more'n I do his'n," answered Jackson. 
"But I guess he'd 'a' been welcome to stop, 
seein' as we ain't standin' on ceremony, an' our 
cards is out to everybody. Come one, come 
all! But, no, I bar Mr. and Mrs. Skunk. 



98 THE SECRET TRAILS 

Ye're a soft-hearted old eejut, Tom, an' never 
like to hurt nobody's feelin's, but I do hope 
now ye didn't go an' send cards to Mr. and 
Mrs. Skunk." 

Brannigan chuckled. He was feeling bet- 
ter and more like himself already. 

"I don't believe they'll be comin'," he an- 
swered, evading the point of the invitation. 
"Like as not, they're cut off in their holes an' 
drownded, 'less they've took to the trees in 
time. They ain't no great travellers, ye 
know, Long." 

"I ain't puttin' on no mournin' fer 'em," 
grunted Jackson. "An' there's another var- 
mint ye hadn't no call to invite, Tom," he 
added, as the rabbits again scattered in con- 
sternation, and a big lynx emerged from a 
spruce thicket on which the flood was just 
beginning to encroach. The lynx, too fright- 
ened at the rising water to give even one look 
at the rabbits, glared about her with round, 
pale, savage eyes. As she caught sight of 
Jackson, her fur fluffed up and she scrambled 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 99 

into the nearest tree, where she crouched be- 
hind a branch. 

Brannigan spared but a glance for the ter- 
rified lynx, his interest being largely absorbed 
in the two does, whose trustfulness had won 
his heart. Just inside the cabin door, and 
within reach of his arm, was a shelf, whereon 
stood a tin plate containing some cold buck- 
wheat pancakes, or flap-jacks, left over from 
breakfast. A couple of these he tossed to the 
does. Gentle as was the action, the nervous 
beasts bounded backwards, snorting with ap- 
prehension. In a few moments, however, as 
if coming to realize that the movement of 
Brannigan's arm had not been a hostile one, 
they came forward again hesitatingly, and at 
length began to sniff at the pancakes. For 
some moments the sniffing was distinctly su- 
percilious. Then one of them ventured to 
nibble. Half a minute more, and both flap- 
jacks had been greedily gobbled. Their im- 
mense, mild eyes plainly asking for more of 
the novel provender, the pair stepped a little 



ioo THE SECRET TRAILS 

closer. Brannigan reached for another cake, 
to divide between them. 

Long Jackson got up from his log, tapped 
the ashes from his pipe, and came into the 
cabin. 

"I'll be leavin' ye to entertain the ladies, 
Tom," said he, "while I git dinner." 



II 

A CLOUD passing over the sun, the air grew 
sharply cold on the instant. Long Jackson 
bundled Brannigan away from the door, and 
shut it inexorably. But as Brannigan refused 
to be put back into his bunk, Jackson ar- 
ranged him an awkward sort of couch of 
benches and boxes by the table, where he 
made his first "sitting-up" meal. After din- 
ner, the sun having come out again, he insisted 
upon the door being once more thrown open, 
that he might drink in the medicine of the 
spring air and have another look at his me- 
nagerie. 

"Holy Je-hoshaphat!" exclaimed Jackson, 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 101 

as the door swung back. "This ain't no 
menagerie we've got here, Tom. It's a 
Noah's Ark, that's what it be!" 

The two does, trembling with fright, were 
huddled against the wall of the cabin, close 
beside the door, staring at an immense and 
gaunt-framed bear, which was sitting up on 
its haunches on Jackson's chopping-block. 
More than half the clearing was under water. 
Five more bears sat near the chopping-block, 
eyeing the water fearfully and whimpering 
like puppies. Quite near them, and letting 
his shrewd eyes survey the whole scene with 
an air of lofty indifference, sat a red fox, his 
fur bedraggled as if from a long and hard 
swim. In two compact masses, on either side 
of the bears and the fox, and as far away 
from them as they could get, huddled the 
rabbits, their eyes fairly popping from their 
heads. Further away, standing hock-deep in 
the water, were half a dozen more red deer, 
afraid to come any closer to the bears. In the 
branches of the one tree — a spreading rock- 
maple — which had been left standing near the 



102 THE SECRET TRAILS 

cabin, crouched a lynx and a wildcat, as far 
apart as possible, and eyeing each other jeal- 
ously. 

One of the bears, restless in his anxiety, 
shifted his position and came a little nearer 
to the cabin. The two does, snorting at his 
approach, backed abruptly into the doorway, 
jamming Jackson against the doorpost. 

"Oh, don't mind me, ladies!" said Jackson, 
with elaborate sarcasm. "Come right along 
in an' set down!" 

Whereupon the frightened animals, flying 
in the face of that tradition of the wild 
creatures which teaches them to dread any- 
thing like a cul-de-sac, took him at his word. 
Stamping their delicate hoofs in a sort of 
timorous defiance to the bears, and ignoring 
both Jackson and Brannigan completely, they 
backed into the rear of the cabin, stared about 
the place curiously, and at length fell to nib- 
bling the hay which formed the bedding of 
the bunks. 

"Did ever ye see the likes o' that for 
nerve?" demanded Jackson. 







'This ain't no menagerie weVe got here, Tom. It's a 
Noah's Ark, that's what it be !" 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 103 

"They've got sense, them two," said Bran- 
nigan. "They know who'll stand up fer 'em 
if them bears begin to git ugly." 

"But we don't want the whole kit an' cala- 
bash pilin' in on us," said Jackson with deci- 
sion. "An' we don't want to shet the door 
and not be able to see what's goin' on, neether. 
Guess I'd better fix up a kind o' barricade, 
so's I kin hold the pass in case of them there 
fee-rocious rabbits undertakin' to rush us." 

With a bench and some boxes, he built 
a waist-high barrier across the doorway, and 
then he arranged for Brannigan a couch on 
the table, so that the invalid could look out 
comfortably over the barrier. 

"Reserved seat in Noah's Ark for ye, Tom," 
said he. 

"Hadn't ye better be fetchin' the canoe 
round to the front, where ye kin keep an eye 
onto it?" suggested Brannigan. 

"By Jing, yes!" agreed Jackson. "If one 
of them slick old bears 'd take a notion to 
h'ist it into the water an' make off in it, I 
guess we'd be in the porridge." 



104 THE SECRET TRAILS 

He hitched his long legs over the barrier 
and stalked out coolly among the beasts. 

The wild-cat and the lynx in the branches 
overhead laid back their ears and showed 
their teeth in vicious snarls; and the rabbits 
huddled so close together that the two packs 
of them heaved convulsively as each strove 
to get behind or underneath his neighbours. 
The bears sullenly drew away to the water's 
edge, and the huge fellow perched on the 
chopping-block jumped down nimbly from 
his perch and joined the others with a pro- 
testing woof. The fox stood his ground and 
kept up his air of indifference, his native 
shrewdness telling him that the man was pay- 
ing no heed to him whatever. The deer also 
did not seem greatly disturbed by Jackson's 
appearance, merely waving their big ears and 
staring interrogatively. Jackson picked up 
the canoe and turned it bottom side up across 
the doorway. Then he stepped indoors again. 
About the middle of the afternoon it be- 
came evident that the water had stopped 
rising. It had apparently found an overflow 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 105 

somehow, and there was no longer any risk 
of the cabin being swept away. Tired with 
the excitement, Brannigan fell asleep. And 
Jackson, with the backwoodsman's infinite 
capacity for doing nothing, when there is 
nothing to do, sat beside his barricade for 
hour after hour and smoked. And for hour 
after hour nothing happened. When night 
fell, he shut the door and secured it with 
special care. 

Throughout the night it rained heavily, 
under a lashing wind which drove the rain 
in sheets against the rear of the cabin; but 
soon after dawn the sun came out again and 
shone with eager warmth. Brannigan awoke 
so much better that he was able to sit up and 
help himself to the doorway instead of being 
carried. The two does, thoroughly at home 
in the cabin, swallowed the cold pancakes, 
and kept close to Jackson's elbow, begging for 
more. 

When the door was opened, it was seen that 
the animals had all been driven round to the 
front of the cabin for shelter. The space 



io6 THE SECRET TRAILS 

under the upturned canoe was packed with 
rabbits. But the spirit of the bigger animals, 
with the exception of the deer, was now 
changed. 

Since the rise of the flood had come to a 
halt — for the water was at the same mark as 
on the afternoon of the previous day — the 
predatory animals had begun to forget their 
fear of it and to remember that they were 
hungry. The truce of terror was wearing 
very thin. The fox, indeed, as Jackson's 
alert eyes presently perceived, had already 
broken it. At the very edge of the water, 
as far away as possible from the cabin and 
the bears, he was sitting up demurely on his 
haunches and licking his chaps. But a tell- 
tale heap of bones and blood-stained fur gave 
him away. In the darkness he had stolen up 
to the rabbits, nipped one noiselessly by the 
neck, and carried it off without any of its fel- 
lows being any the wiser. He could afford 
to wait with equanimity for the flood to go 
down. 

The lynx had come down out of her tree 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 107 

and was crouching at the foot of it, eyeing 
first the bears and then the rabbits. She 
turned her tameless, moon-pale eyes upon 
Jackson in the doorway, and bared her teeth 
in a soundless snarl. Jackson, wondering 
what she was up to, kept perfectly still. 
The next moment she darted forward, belly 
to earth, and pounced upon the nearest rabbit. 
The victim screamed amazingly loud, and the 
packed mass of its companions seemed to boil 
as they trampled each other underfoot. 
Growling harshly, the lynx sprang back to the 
tree with her prey, ran up the trunk with it, 
and crouched in a crotch to make her meal, 
keeping a malignant and jealous eye upon the 
wild-cat on her neighbouring branch. 

As if fired by this example, one of the bears 
made a rush upon the luckless rabbits. He 
struck down two with a deft stroke of his paw, 
dashed them to one side to remove them from 
the too close proximity of Jackson, and lay 
down comfortably to devour them. 

At this second attack, the unfortunate rab- 
bits seemed to wake up to the necessity of 



108 THE SECRET TRAILS 

doing something radical. Two or three of 
those nearest the cabin made a sudden dart for 
the door. They jumped upon the upturned 
canoe, stared fearfully for an instant at Jack- 
son, then leapt past him over the barrier and 
took refuge in the farthest corner of the cabin, 
under the bunk. Jackson, according to his 
prearranged plan, had made an effort to stop 
them, but it was a half-hearted effort, and he 
shook his head at Brannigan with a deprecat- 
ing grin. 

" ^ Taint exackly healthy for the blame lit- 
tle scuts, out there with the bear an' the wild- 
cats," said he apologetically. Jackson was 
quite ready to shoot rabbits, of course, when 
they were needed for stew; but his soft, incon- 
sistent heart had been moved at seeing the 
helpless things mangled by the lynx and the 
bear. Perfect consistency, after all, would be 
an unpleasant thing to live with in this excel- 
lent but paradoxical world. 

The words were hardly out of Jackson's 
mouth when the rest of the bears came stalk- 
ing up, great, black, menacing forms, to levy 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 109 

toll upon the rabbits. Instantly the frantic 
little animals began pouring in a tumultuous 
stream over the canoe and the barrier and into 
the cabin. Seeing their dinners thus unex- 
pectedly disappearing, the bears made a rush 
forward. 

Jackson, fearing lest they should charge 
straight into the cabin, sprang for his gun, and 
was back in the doorway again in a flash, care- 
lessly thrusting aside with his feet the in- 
coming flood of furry, hopping figures, but 
making no effort to keep it out. 

The bears, reaching the packed and strug- 
gling rear rank of the fugitives before it could 
dissolve and gain the refuge, captured each a 
victim, and drew back again hastily with their 
prizes, still apprehensive of the silent grey 
figure of Jackson in the doorway. And in 
two minutes more all the rabbits were inside 
the cabin, covering the floor and struggling 
with each other to keep from being pushed 
too close to the hot stove. The two does, 
resenting the invasion, snorted angrily and 
struck at them with their sharp, agile hoofs, 



no THE SECRET TRAILS 

killing several before the rest learned to keep 
out of the way. One enterprising little ani- 
mal sprang into the lower bunk, and was 
straightway followed by the nearest of his fel- 
lows, till the bunk was filled to overflowing. 

"How'll ye like it, sleepin' along o' that 
bunch o' bed-fellers, Tom?" inquired Jackson 
derisively. 

"Ye'll sleep with 'em yourself, Long," re- 
torted Brannigan from his place on the table. 
"1 didn't let 'em in. They're your visitors. 
Me bein' an invalid, I'm goin' to take the top 
bunk!" 

Long Jackson scratched his head. 

"What's botherin' me," said he, grown sud- 
denly serious, "is them bears. If they take it 
into their heads to come in an' board along 
of us, I'm goin' to hev a job to stop 'em. I've 
only four ca'tridge left, an' ther's six bear. 
They've et ther rabbits, an' what's one small 
rabbit to a rale hungry bear? Here's the 
biggest an' hungriest comin' now! Scat/" he 

yelled fiercely. "Scat! You !" And 

he added a string of backwoods objurgation 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD m 

that this modest page would never consent to 
record. 

Apparently abashed at this reception, the 
bear backed away hastily and glanced around 
at the landscape as if he had had no least 
thought of intruding. 

Brannigan laughed as he had not laughed 
for weeks. 

"That langwidge o' yourn's better'n any 
gun, Long!" said he. 

"Guess it's saved us one ca'tridge, that 
time!" he acknowledged modestly. "But I'm 
thinkin' it won't keep 'em off when they get 
a mite hungrier. Ye kin curse like an An- 
droscoggin lumber jack, but y'ain't goin' to 
frizzle a single hair on a bear's hide. Now, 
here they come agin! I'd better shoot one, 
an' mebbe that'll discourage 'em. Anyhow, 
they kin eat the one I shoot, and that'll keep 
'em from hankerin' so after rabbits." 

He raised his gun, but Brannigan stopped 
him sharply. 

"Jest shet the door, ye old eejut!" he cried. 
"Ye know as well as I do that ef ye git a bear 



ii2 THE SECRET TRAILS 

rale mad, an' he thinks he's cornered, there's 
goin' to be trouble. Jest shet the door, that's 
all!" 

"To be sure! Why didn't I think o' that 
afore?" agreed Jackson, kicking the boxes 
aside and slamming the heavy door without 
ceremony in the face of the nearest bear, who 
had already lifted his fore-paws upon the 
canoe and was peering in wistfully at the 
rabbits. 

With his feet in a foam of rabbits — the 
creatures seeming to have lost all fear of him 
— Jackson sat down on a box and lit his pipe, 
while Brannigan, leaning over from his couch 
on the table, tried to feed the rabbits with 
biscuits. The rabbits would have none of it, 
but the two does, greedy and jealous, came 
mincing forward at once to appropriate the 
attention and the tit-bits. 

Presently the air grew unbearably hot and 
close, with the reek of the crowding animals 
and the heat of the stove. After the fashion 
of the backwoodsman, the men endured it 



THE CABIN IN THE FLOOD 113 

till they were gasping. Then Jackson went 
to the little window — which was not made to 
open — and prised out the sash with the edge 
of his axe-blade. He filled his lungs with a 
deep breath, drew back from the window, 
then sprang forward again and thrust his head 
out for a better look. 

"tft broker he shouted. "The water's 
goin' down hand over fist!" 

"It'll save a lot o' trouble," said Brannigan, 
with a sigh of relief. 

By noon the water had disappeared, and 
the bears, the wild-cat, and the fox had disap- 
peared with it. After waiting another hour, 
that the hungry beasts might be well out of 
the way, Jackson opened the door and began 
to turn the rabbits out. At first they refused 
obstinately to go, so that he had to seize them 
by the ears and throw them out. But pres- 
ently some sign seemed to go round among 
them to the effect that their enemies were out 
of the way. Then they all began to make for 
the door, but quite at their leisure, and soon 



ii 4 THE SECRET TRAILS 

were hopping off among the trees in every 
direction. After them at last, went the two 
does, without so much as once looking back. 

"Durned if the place don't look kind o' 
lonesome without 'em!" murmured Branni- 
gan. 

"Umph!" grunted Jackson. "It's easy 
seein' 'tain't you that's got to do the cleanin' 
up after 'em. If ever ye go to hev another 
party like that, Tom, I'm goin' to quit." 

The spring wind, mild and spicy from the 
spruce forests, breathed through the cabin 
from the open door to the open window, and 
a chickadee ran over his fine-drawn, bead- 
like refrain from the branches where the lynx 
and wild-cat had been crouching. 



The Brothers of the Yoke 

SIDE by side, in the position in which they 
were accustomed to labour at the yoke — 
Star on the off side, Buck on the nigh — they 
stood waiting in the twilight beside the pasture 
bars. From the alder swamp behind the pas- 
ture, coolly fragrant under the first of the dew- 
fall, came the ethereal fluting of a hermit 
thrush, most tender and most poignant of all 
bird songs. In the vault of the pale sky — pale 
violet washes of thin colour over unfathom- 
able deeps of palest green — a wide-swooping 
night-hawk sounded at intervals its long, 
twanging note, like a stricken harpstring. 
The dark spruce woods beyond the barn began 
to give off their aromatic balsam-scent upon 
the evening air. A frog croaked from some- 
where under the alders where the hermit was 
at his fluting. One of the oxen at last began 
to low softly and anxiously. It was long past 

115 



n6 THE SECRET TRAILS 

watering-time. Immediately his mate re- 
peated the complaint, but on a harsher, more 
insistent key. The watering trough, full to 
the brim, was there in full view before them, 
just at the other side of the cabin. It was an 
unheard-of thing that their master should not 
come at sundown to lower the bars and let 
them drink their fill. 

They were a splendid pair, these two steers, 
and splendidly matched. Both dark red, deep 
and massive in the shoulder, with short, 
straight horns, and each with a clean white star 
in the centre of his broad forehead, they were 
so exactly alike in all external particulars, that 
the uninitiated eye would have been puzzled 
to distinguish them. Both stood also with the 
patient, bowed necks of those who have toiled 
long under the burden of the yoke. But to 
one at all acquainted with animals, at all 
versed in the psychology of the animal mind, 
the difference between the two was obvious. 
The temperaments that looked out from their 
big, dark eyes were different. The very pa- 
tience of their bowed heads was different in 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 117 

expression. The patience of Star, the off ox, 
was an accepting, contented patience. Curses, 
blows, the jabs of the ox-goad, he took mildly, 
as a matter of course, and, being his master's 
favourite, he got just as few of them as the 
exigencies of backwoods ploughing and haul- 
ing would permit. But with Buck it was far 
otherwise. In his eyes flickered always the 
spark of a spirit unsubdued. He had a side 
glance, surly yet swift, that put the observant 
on their guard. He never accepted the goad 
without a snort of resentment, a threatening 
shake of his short, sharp horns. And he had 
command of a lightning kick which had taught 
discretion to more than one worrying cur. 
Yet he was valued, even while distrusted, by 
his owner, because he was intelligent, well- 
trained, and a glutton for work, both quicker 
than his docile yoke- fellow and more untiring. 
Between the two great red steers there was 
that close attachment which has been so often 
observed between animals long accustomed to 
working in the same harness. They become a 
habit to each other, and seem, therefore, essen- 



n8 THE SECRET TRAILS 

tial to each other's peace of mind. But on 
the part of Buck it was something more than 
this. Ill-tempered and instinctively hostile 
toward every one else, man or beast, he showed 
signs of an active devotion to his tranquil yoke- 
fellow, and would sometimes spend hours 
licking Star's neck while the latter went on 
chewing the cud in complacent acceptance of 
the attention. 

The twilight gathered deeper about the 
lonely backwoods clearing. The night-hawk, 
a soaring and swooping speck in the pallia 
spaces of the sky, became invisible, though his 
strange note still twanged sonorously from 
time to time. The hermit hushed his fluting 
in the alder thicket. An owl hooted solemnly 
from somewhere back in the spruce woods. 
But still the owner of the oxen did not come 
to lower the bars and give admittance to the 
brimming trough. He was lying dead beside 
the brawling trout-brook, a mile or so down 
the tote-road, his neck broken by a flying 
branch from a tree which he had felled too 
carelessly. His dog was standing over the 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 119 

sprawled body, whining and pawing at it in 
distracted solicitude. 

To the two thirsty oxen the cool smell of 
the waiting trough was cruelly tantalizing. 
To one of them it speedily became irresistible. 
Buck was not, by instinct, any great respecter 
of bounds or barriers. He began hooking im- 
patiently at the bars, while Star gazed at him 
in placid wonder. The bars were solid and 
well set, and Buck seemed to realize almost at 
once that there was little to be done in that 
quarter. Feeling for a weak spot, he worked 
his way along beyond them to the first panel 
of the fence. It was the ordinary rough 
"snake" of the backwoods clearing, a zigzag 
structure of rough poles, supported at the 
angles by crossed stakes. Never very substan- 
tial, it had been broken and somewhat care- 
lessly mended at this particular point. The 
top rail lifted easily under the thrust of Buck's 
aimlessly tossing horn. It fell down again at 
once into its place in the crotch of the crossed 
stakes, and, in falling, it struck the fumbling 
experimenter a sharp whack across the nose. 



120 THE SECRET TRAILS 

The hot-tempered steer, already irritated, 
flared up at once, and butted heavily at the 
fence with his massive forehead. One of the 
cross-stakes, already half-rotted through, broke 
at once, and the two top rails went down with 
a crash. Following up this push, he threw 
his ponderous weight against the remaining 
rails, now left unsupported, breasted them 
down almost without an effort, and went 
crashing and triumphing through into the 
yard. His mate, who would never himself 
have dreamed of such a venture as breaking 
bounds, stared irresolutely for a few seconds, 
then followed through the gap. And side by 
side the two slaked their thrust, plunging their 
broad muzzles into the cool of the trough and 
lifting them to blow the drops luxuriously 
from their nostrils. 

The impulse of Star was now to turn back 
into the familiar pasture, according to custom. 
But Buck, on the other hand, was used to being 
driven back and that always more or less under 
protest. For the first time in his memory, 
there was now no one to drive him back. He 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 121 

had a strange, new sense of freedom, of re- 
straint removed. He was accustomed to see- 
ing a light in the cabin window about this 
hour. But there was no light. The whole 
place seemed empty with a new kind of empti- 
ness. Nothing was further from his fancy 
than to return to the pasture prison which he 
had just broken out of. He stood with head 
uplifted, as if already the galling memory of 
the yoke had slipped from off his neck. 

For a minute or two he stood sniffing with 
wide nostrils, drinking deep the chill, keen- 
scented air. It was the same air as he had 
been breathing on the other side of the pas- 
ture-bars, but it smelt very different to him. 
Something there was in it which called him 
away irresistibly into the dark, unfenced 
depths of the forest which surrounded the 
clearing. He turned his great head and lowed 
coaxingly to his partner, who was standing be- 
side the gap in the pasture fence and staring 
after him in placid question. Then he started 
off with a brisk step down the shadowy, pale 
ribbon of the road. 



122 THE SECRET TRAILS 

Star's natural impulse, after drinking, was 
to return to the familiar, comfortable pasture; 
but not without his yoke-mate. The stronger 
impulse ruled. With some reluctance and a 
good deal of bovine wonder, he swung around 
and hastened after Buck. The latter waited 
for him; and side by side, as if in yoke, though 
with less labouring steps, they turned off the 
deeply rutted highway and moved silently 
down a mossed old wood road into the glim- 
mering dark of the forest. 

A sure instinct in Buck's feet was leading 
them straight away from the Settlements, 
straight into the heart of the wilderness. 
After perhaps an hour the wood-road led out 
of the thick forest across a little wild meadow 
with a shallow brook babbling softly through 
it. Here the two grazed for a time, almost 
belly deep in the thick-flowered grass, while 
the bats flickered and zigzagged above them, 
and a couple of whip-poor-wills answered 
each other monotonously from opposite ends 
of the glade. Then they lay down side by side 
to chew the cud and to sleep, surrounded by 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 123 

the pungent smell of the stalks of the wild 
parsnip which their huge bulks had crushed 
down. 

They lay in a corner of the glade, close to 
the dense thickets that formed the fringe 
of the woods. Unaccustomed to vigilance, 
neither their eyes nor their ears were on the 
alert A lynx crept up behind them, within 
a dozen paces, glared at them vindictively with 
its pale, malignant moon-eyes, and then ran 
up a tree to get a better look at these mighty 
intruders upon his hunting-ground. His 
claws made a loud rattling on the bark as he 
climbed, but neither of the oxen paid any at- 
tention whatever to the sound. Of course, a 
lynx could not, under any circumstances, be 
anything more than an object of mild curiosity 
to them, but had it been a pair of hungry 
panthers, they would have been equally un- 
conscious and unwarned. They lay with their 
backs to the forest, looking out across the open, 
chewing lazily, and from time to time heav- 
ing windy breaths of deep content. Not a 
score of yards before their noses a trailing 



i2 4 THE SECRET TRAILS 

weasel ran down and killed a hare. At the 
cry of the victim Buck opened his half-closed 
eyes and gave a snort of disapproval. But 
Star paid no attention whatever to the little 
tragedy. All his faculties were engrossed 
upon his comfort and his cud. 

A little later a prowling fox came suddenly 
upon them. He was surprised to find the pair 
so far from their pasture, where he had several 
times observed them in the course of his wide 
wanderings. His shrewd mind jumped to the 
idea that perhaps the settler, their master, was 
out with them; and while he had no objection 
whatever to the oxen — stupid, harmless hulks 
in his eyes — he had the most profound objec- 
tion to their master and his gun. He slipped 
back into cover, encircled the whole glade 
stealthily till he picked up their trail, and 
satisfied himself that they had come alone. 
Then he returned and sat down on his tail de- 
liberately in front of them, cocking his head 
to one side, as if inviting them to explain their 
presence. 

Star returned his gaze with placid indiffer- 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 125 

ence, but Buck was annoyed. In his eyes the 
fox was a little sharp-nosed dog with a bushy 
tail and an exasperating smell. He hated all 
dogs, but especially little ones, because they 
were so elusive when they yapped at his heels. 
He heaved himself up with an angry snort, 
and charged upon the intruder. The fox, 
without losing his dignity at all, seemed to 
drift easily out of reach, to this side or that, 
till the ox grew tired of the futile chase. 
Moreover, as the fox made no sound and no 
demonstration of heel-snapping, Buck's anger 
presently faded out, and he returned to his 
partner's side and lay down again. And the 
fox, his curiosity satisfied, trotted away. 

A little later there came a stealthy crashing 
through the darkness of the underbush in the 
rear. But the two oxen never turned their 
heads. To them the ominous sound had no 
significance whatever. A few paces behind 
them the crashing came to a sudden stop. A 
bear, lumbering down toward the brook-side, 
to grub in the soft earth for edible roots, had 
caught the sound of their breathing and chew- 



i 2 6 THE SECRET TRAILS 

ing. He knew the sound, for he, too, like the 
fox, had prowled about the pasture fence at 
night. As noiselessly as a shadow he crept 
nearer, till he could make out the contented 
pair. He knew they belonged to the man, and 
it made him uneasy to see them there, so far 
from where they belonged. He sniffed the air 
cautiously, to see if the man was with them. 
No, the man was not there, that was soon ob- 
vious. He had no thought of attacking them ; 
they were much too formidable to be meddled 
with. But why were they there? The cir- 
cumstance was, therefore, dangerous. Per- 
haps the man was designing some sort of trap 
for him. He drew back cautiously, and made 
off by the way he had come. He had a whole- 
some respect for the man, and for all his works 
and belongings. 

In the first, mysterious, glassy grey of dawn, 
when thin wisps of vapour clung curling 
among the grass-tops, the two wanderers got 
up and fell to grazing. Then Star, who was 
beginning to feel homesick for old pasture 
fields, strayed away irresolutely toward the 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 127 

road for home. Buck, however, would have 
none of it. He marched off toward the brook, 
splashed through, and fell to pasturing again 
on the farther side. Star, not enduring to be 
left alone, immediately joined him. 

That day the pair pressed onward, deeper 
and deeper into the wilds, Buck ever eager on 
the unknown quest, Star ever reluctant, but 
persuaded. As a matter of fact, had Star been 
resolute enough in his reluctance, had he had 
the independence to lie down and refuse to go 
farther, he would have gained the day, for 
Buck would never have forsaken him. But 
initiative ruled inertia, as is usually the case, 
and Buck's adventuring spirit had its way. 

It was a rugged land, but hospitable enough 
to the wanderers in this affluent late June 
weather, through which Buck so confidently 
led the way. The giant tangle of the forest 
was broken by frequent wild meadows, and 
foaming streams, and lonely little granite-bor- 
dered lakes, and stretches of sun-steeped bar- 
ren, all bronze green with blueberry scrub. 
There was plenty to eat, plenty to drink, and 



128 THE SECRET TRAILS 

when the flies and the heat grew troublesome, 
it was pleasant to wallow in the cold, amber- 
brown pools. Even Star began to forget the 
home pasture, and content himself with the 
freedom which he had never craved. 

How far and to what goal the urge in 
Buck's untamed heart would have carried them 
before exhausting itself, there is no telling. 
But he had challenged without knowledge the 
old, implacable sphinx of the wilderness. 
And suddenly, to his undoing, the challenge 
was accepted. 

On the third day of their wanderings the 
pair came out upon a river too deep and wide 
for even Buck's daring to attempt to cross. 
The banks were steep — a succession of rocky 
bluffs, broken by deep lateral bayous, and 
strips of interval meadows where brooks came 
in through a fringe of reeds and alders. Buck 
turned northward, following the bank up 
stream, sometimes close to the edge, sometimes 
a little way back, wheresoever the easier path 
or the most tempting patches of pasturage 
might seem to lead. He was searching always 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 129 

for some feasible crossing, for his instinct led 
him always to get over any barrier. That his 
path toward the west had been barred only 
confirmed him in his impulse to work west- 
ward. 

Late that afternoon, as they burst out, 
through thick bushes, into a little grassy glade, 
they surprised a bear-cub playing with a big 
yellow fungus, which he boxed and cuffed 
about — carefully, so as not to break his play- 
thing — as a kitten boxes a ball. To Buck, of 
course, the playful cub was only another dog, 
which might be expected to come yapping 
and snapping at his heels. With an indignant 
snort he charged it. 

The cub, at that ominous sound, looked up 
in astonishment. But when he saw the terri- 
ble red form dashing down upon him across 
the grass, he gave a squeal of terror and fled 
for the shelter of the trees. He was too young, 
however, for any great speed or agility, and 
he had none of the dog's artfulness in dodging. 
Before he could gain cover he was overtaken. 
Buck's massive front caught him on his 



130 THE SECRET TRAILS 

haunches, smashing him into the ground. He 
gave one agonized squall, and then the life was 
crushed out of him. 

Amazed at this easy success — the first of the 
kind he had ever had — but immensely proud 
of himself, the great red ox drew off and eyed 
his victim for a second or two, his tail lashing 
his sides in angry triumph. Then he fell to 
goring the small black body, and tossing it 
into the air, and battering it again with his 
forehead as it came down. He was taking 
deep vengeance for all the yelping curs which 
had worried and eluded him in the past. 

In the midst of this congenial exercise he 
caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, of 
a big black shape just hurling itself upon him. 
The mother bear, a giant of her kind, had come 
to the cry of her little one. 

Buck whirled with amazing nimbleness to 
meet the attack. He was in time to escape the 
blow which would have cracked even his 
mighty neck, but the long, steel-hard claws 
of his assailant fairly raked off one side of his 
face, destroying one eye completely. At the 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 131 

same time, with a shrill bellow, he lunged for- 
ward, driving a short, punishing horn deep 
into the bear's chest and hurling her back upon 
her haunches. 

Dreadful as was his own injury, this for- 
tunate thrust gave him the advantage for the 
moment But, being unlearned in battle, he 
did not know enough to follow it up. He 
drew back to prepare for another charge, and 
paused to stamp the ground, and bellow, and 
shake his horribly wounded head. 

The mother, heedless of her own deep 
wound, turned to sniff, whimpering, at the 
body of her cub. Seeing at once that it was 
quite dead, she wheeled like a flash and hurled 
herself again upon the slayer. As she wheeled 
she came upon Buck's blinded side. He 
lunged forward once again, mad for the strug- 
gle. But this time, half blind as he was, he 
was easily eluded, for the old bear was a 
skilled fighter. A monstrous weight crashed 
down upon his neck, just behind the ears, and 
the bright green world grew black before him. 
He stumbled heavily forward on knees and 



i 3 2 THE SECRET TRAILS 

muzzle, with a choking bellow. The bear 
struck again, and with the other paw tore out 
his throat, falling upon him and mauling him 
with silent fury as he rolled over upon his 
side. 

Star, meanwhile, being ever slow of wit and 
of purpose, had been watching with startled 
eyes, unable to take in the situation, although 
a strange heat was beginning to stretch his 
veins. But when he saw his yoke-mate 
stumble forward on his muzzle, when he heard 
that choking bellow of anguish, then the un- 
accustomed fire found its way up into his brain. 
He saw red, and, with a nimbleness far beyond 
that of Buck at his swiftest, he launched him- 
self into the battle. 

The bear, absorbed in the fulness of her 
vengeance, was taken absolutely by surprise. 
It was as if a ton of rock had been hurled 
against her flank, rolling her over and crush- 
ing her at the same time. In his rage the 
great red ox seemed suddenly to develop an 
aptitude for the battle. Twisting his head, he 
buried one horn deep in his adversary's belly, 




He launched himself into the battle. 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 133 

where he ripped and tore with the all-destruc- 
tive fury of a mad rhinoceros. The bear's 
legs closed convulsively about his head and 
shoulders, but in the next instant they relaxed 
again, falling away loosely as that ploughing 
horn reached and pierced the heart. Then 
Star drew back, and stood shaking his head to 
clear the blood out of his eyes. 

For two days and nights Star stood over his 
yoke-mate's body, leaving his post only for a 
few yards and for a few minutes, at long inter- 
vals, to crop a mouthful of grass or to drink at 
that cold stream which ran past the edge of the 
tragic glade. On the third day two woods- 
men, passing down the river in a canoe, were 
surprised to hear the lowing of an ox in that 
desolate place, far from even the remotest 
settler's cabin. The lowing was persistent and 
appealing. They went ashore and investi- 
gated. 

At the scene which they came upon in 
the sunny little glade they stood marvelling. 
After a time their shrewd conjectures, initiated 
as they were in all the mysteries of the wild, 



i 3 4 THE SECRET TRAILS 

arrived at a fairly accurate interpretation of 
it all. 

"It was sure some scrap, anyhow," was the 
final conclusion of one grizzled investigator; 
and "Wish't we could V seen it," of the other. 
Then, the big red ox, with blood caked over 
head and horns, being too admired as well as 
too valuable to be left behind, they decided 
that one of them should stop on shore and drive 
him, while the other followed slowly in the 
canoe. 

At first Star refused stolidly to budge from 
his dead comrade's side. But the woodsman 
was in winter a teamster, and what he did not 
know about driving oxen was not worth know- 
ing. He cut a long white stick like an ox- 
goad, took his place at Star's side, gave him a 
firm prod in the flank, and cried in a voice of 
authority: "Haw, Bright!" 

At the old command, although "Bright" 
was not the right name, Star seemed once more 
to feel the familiar, and to him not unpleasant, 
pressure of the yoke upon his neck. He 
swerved obediently to the left, lowering his 



BROTHERS OF THE YOKE 135 

head and throwing his weight forward to start 
the imaginary load, and moved away as his 
new master ordered. And gradually, as he 
went, directed this way or that by the sharp 
commands of "Gee!" or "Haw!" and the light 
reminder of the goad, his grief for his yoke- 
fellow began to dull its edge. It was comfort- 
ing to be once more controlled, to be snatched 
back into servitude from a freedom which had 
proved so strenuous and so terrible. 



The Trailers 

YOUNG Stan Murray turned on his heel 
and went into the house for his gun. 
His breast boiled with pity and indignation. 
The hired man, coming down from the Upper 
Field, had just told him that two more of his 
sheep had been killed by the bears. The 
sheep were of fine stock, only lately introduced 
to the out-settlements, and they were Stan's 
special charge. These two last made seven 
that the bears had taken within six weeks. 
Stan Murray, with the robust confidence of 
his eighteen years, vowed that the marauder, 
or marauders, should be brought to an account- 
ing without more ado, though it should take 
him a week to trail them down. He stuffed 
some hardtack biscuits and a generous lump 
of cheese into his pockets, saw that his Win- 
chester repeater was duly charged, buckled on 

136 



THE TRAILERS 137 

his cartridge-belt, and started for the Upper 
Field. 

The hired man led him to the scene of the 
tragedy. The two victims — both full-grown 
sheep — had been struck down close to the edge 
of the field, within a dozen yards of each other. 
Nothing was left of them there but their 
woolly skins and big sploshes of darkened 
blood on the stiff turf of the pasture. The 
carcases had evidently been dragged or carried 
off into the dark seclusion of the fir woods 
which bordered the top and farther side of the 
field. It was now just after midday, and 
Stan and the hired man agreed, after examina- 
tion of all the signs, that the killing must have 
taken place early the previous night. 

"It's a long ways from here them b'ar'll be 
by this time, I'm thinkin'," said the hired man. 
Not a native of the backwoods, he was little 
versed in wilderness lore. 

"Not at all," corrected Murray. "Like as 
not they're within a half mile or so of us now. 
They wouldn't lug those fat sheep far. 
They'd just eat what they wanted an' hide the 



138 THE SECRET TRAILS 

rest in the bushes. And they'd come back 
an' finish it up when they'd slept off the first 
feed. What would they want to travel for, 
when they'd got such a dead easy thing right 
here?" 

"Um-m-m!" grunted the hired man grudg- 
ingly. "Mebbe you're right. But I'd like to 
know who's been here afore us, an' rolled up 
this here skin so tidy-like? T'other skin's left 
all of a heap, mebbe because it's so torn 'tain't 
no good to nobody." 

The young woodsman laughed, for all his 
vexation of spirit. 

"Lot you know about bears, Tom," said he. 
"You see, there's been two bears here on this 
job, curse their dirty hides! One's a young- 
ster, an' don't know much about skinning a 
sheep. He's just clawed off the skin any old 
way, an' made a mess of it, as you see. But 
the other's an old hand, evidently, an' knows 
what he's about — an old she, likely, an' per- 
haps mother of the young one. She's known 
how to peel off the skin, rolling it up that way 
quite as a man might do. Now, Tom, you get 



THE TRAILERS 139 

along back home, an' take the skins with you. 
I'm going after those two, an' I'm not coming 
home till I've squared up with 'em over this 
here deal." 

For half a mile or more back into the woods 
the trail of the marauders was a plain one to 
follow. Then Murray found the remnants of 
the two victims hidden in a mass of thick 
underbush, several yards apart. The tracks 
of the two bears encircled the spot, a plain 
proclamation of ownership to any other of the 
wild creatures which might be inclined to tres- 
pass on that domain. And on the trunk of a 
tall spruce, standing close beside the hiding- 
place, the initiated eyes of young Murray de- 
tected another warning to intruders. The 
bark at a considerable height was scored by 
the marks of mighty claws. The larger bear, 
after her meal, had stretched herself like a 
cat, rearing herself and digging in her claws 
against the trunk. And the great height of 
her reach was a pointed announcement that her 
displeasure would be a perilous thing to reckon 
with. As Stan Murray stood, estimating the 



140 THE SECRET TRAILS 

stature of his foe, his eyes began to sparkle. 
This would be a trophy worth winning, the 
hide and head of such a bear. His wrath 
against the slayers of his sheep died away into 
the emulous zest of the hunter. 

The bears, their hunger satisfied, had gone 
on straight back into the wilderness, instead 
of hanging about the scene of their triumph 
or crawling into a neighbouring thicket, as 
Murray had expected, to sleep off their heavy 
feast. Murray thought he knew all about 
bears. As a matter of fact, he did know a lot 
about them. What he did not know was that 
no one, however experienced and sympathetic 
an observer, ever does achieve to know all 
about them. The bear is at the opposite pole 
from the sheep. He is an individualist. He 
does not care to do as his neighbour does. He 
is ever ready to adapt his habits, as well as his 
diet, to the varying of circumstance. He 
loves to depart from his rules and confound 
the naturalists. When you think you've got 
him, he turns out to be an old black stump, 
and laughs in his shaggy sleeve from some 



THE TRAILERS 141 

other hidden post of observation. He makes 
all the other kindred of the wild, except, per- 
haps, the shrewd fox, seem like foolish chil- 
dren beside him. 

For a good hour Murray followed the trail 
of the two bears, at times with some difficulty, 
as the forest gave way in places to breadths 
of hard and stony barren, where the great pads 
left smaller trace. At last, to his annoyance, 
in a patch of swamp, where the trail was very 
clear, he realized that he was now following 
one bear only, and that the smaller of the two. 
He cast assiduously from side to side, but in 
vain. He harked back along the trail for sev- 
eral hundred yards, but he could find no sign 
of the other bear, nor of where she had 
branched off. And it was just that other that 
he wanted. However, he decided that as the 
two were working together, he would probably 
find the second by keeping on after the first, 
rather than by questing at large for a lost trail. 
In any case, as he now reminded himself, it 
was not a trophy, but vengeance for his 
slaughtered sheep that he was out for. 



142 THE SECRET TRAILS 

The trail he had been following hitherto 
had been hours old. Now, of a sudden, he 
noticed with a start that it had become amaz- 
ingly fresh — so fresh, indeed, that he felt he 
might come upon his quarry at any instant. 
How did it happen that the trail had thus 
grown fresh all at once? Decidedly puzzled, 
he halted abruptly and sat down upon a stump 
to consider the problem. 

At last he came to the conclusion that, some- 
where to his rear, the quarry must have 
swerved off to one side or the other, either lain 
down for a brief siesta, or made a wide detour, 
then circled back into the old trail just a little 
way in advance of him. Again, it seemed, he 
had overshot the important and revealing point 
of the trail. He was nettled, disappointed in 
himself. His first impulse was to retrace his 
steps minutely, and try to verify this conclu- 
sion. Then he reflected that, after all, he had 
better content himself with the fact that he was 
now close on the heels of the fugitive, and ven- 
geance, perhaps, almost within his grasp. To 
go back, for the mere sake of proving a theory, 



THE TRAILERS 143 

would be to lose his advantage. Moreover, 
the afternoon was getting on. He decided to 
push forward. 

But now he went warily, peering to this side 
and to that, and scrutinizing every thicket, 
every stump and massive bole. He felt that 
he had been too confident, and made too much 
noise in his going. It was pretty certain that 
the quarry would by now be aware of the pur- 
suit, and cunningly on guard. Twice he had 
been worsted in woodcraft. He was deter- 
mined that the marauders should not score off 
him a third time. 

For another half-hour he kept on, moving 
now as noiselessly as a mink, and watchfully 
as a wood-mouse. Yet the trail went on as 
before, and he could detect no sign that he was 
gaining on the elusive quarry. At last, grown 
suddenly conscious of hunger, he sat down 
upon a mossy stone and proceeded to munch 
his crackers and cheese. He was getting 
rather out of conceit with himself, and the 
meal, hungry though he was, seemed tasteless. 

As he sat there, gnawing discontentedly at 



144 THE SECRET TRAILS 

his dry fare, he began to feel conscious of 
being watched. The short hairs on the back 
of his neck tingled and rose. He looked 
around sharply, but he could see nothing. 
Very softly he rose to his feet. With minutest 
scrutiny his eyes searched every object within 
view. The mingled shadows of the forest 
were confusing, of course, but his trained eyes 
knew how to differentiate them. Neverthe- 
less, neither behind, nor before, nor on either 
side could he make out any living thing, except 
a little black-and-white woodpecker, which 
peered at him with unwinking curiosity from 
a gnarled trunk a dozen feet away. From the 
woodpecker his glance wandered upwards and 
interrogated the lower branches of the sur- 
rounding trees. At last he made out the gleam 
of a pair of pale, malevolent eyes glaring down 
upon him from a high branch. Then he made 
out the shadowy shape, flattened close to the 
branch, of a large wild-cat. 

Murray disliked the whole tribe of the wild- 
cats, as voracious destroyers of game and cun- 
ning depredators upon his poultry, and his rifle 



THE TRAILERS 145 

went instantly to his shoulder. But he low- 
ered it again with a short laugh. He was not 
bothering just then with wild-cats. He cursed 
himself softly as "getting nervous," and sat 
down again to resume his meal, satisfied that 
the sensation at the back of his neck was now 
explained. 

But he had not found the true explanation, 
by any means. In fact, he was fooled yet 
again. 

From less than fifty yards ahead of him a 
little pair of red-rimmed eyes, half angry and 
half curious, were watching his every move- 
ment. Crouching behind two great trunks, 
his quarry was keeping him under wary obser- 
vation, ready to slip onward like a shadow, 
keeping to the shelter of the thicket and bole 
and rock, the moment he should show the least 
sign of taking up the trail again. 

Moreover, from a slightly greater distance 
to his rear, another pair of little red-rimmed 
eyes, less curious and more angry, also held 
him under observation. For an hour or more, 
at least, the older bear had been trailing him 



146 THE SECRET TRAILS 

in her turn with practised cunning. For all 
her immense bulk, she had never betrayed her- 
self by so much as the crackling of a twig; and 
the unconscious, complacent hunter was being 
hunted with a woodcraft far beyond his own. 
Whenever he stopped, or paused for the least 
moment, she came to a stop herself as instantly 
as if worked by the same nerve impulse, and 
stiffened into such stony immobility that she 
seemed at once to melt into her surroundings, 
and became invisible in the sense of being in- 
distinguishable from them. Among mossy 
rocks she seemed to become a rock, among 
stumps a stump, among thickets a portion of 
the dark, shaggy undergrowth. 

Having finished his crackers and cheese, 
Murray got up, brushed the crumbs from his 
jacket, flicked a hard flake of bark contemptu- 
ously at the wild-cat — which darted farther 
up the tree with an angry growl — and once 
more took up the trail. He was beginning 
now to wonder if he was going to accomplish 
anything before the light should fail him, and 
he hurried on at a swifter pace. A few hun- 



THE TRAILERS 147 

dred yards farther, to his considerable gratifi- 
cation, the trail swept around in a wide curve 
towards the right, and made back towards the 
Settlement. "Perhaps," he thought, "that 
fool of a bear does not know, after all, that I 
am on his track, and is going back for the re- 
mainder of his supper." 

Encouraged by this idea, he pushed on faster 
still. 

Then, some ten minutes later, he had reason 
to regret his haste. Crossing a patch of soft, 
open ground, his attention was caught by the 
fact that the footprints he was following had 
miraculously increased in size. Examination 
proved that this was no illusion. And now, 
for the first time, an unpleasant feeling crept 
over him. Apparently he was being played 
with. The second bear, it was evident, had 
slipped in and taken the place of the first, copy- 
ing an old game of the hunted foxes. 

Murray suddenly felt himself alone and out- 
witted. If it had been earlier in the day, he 
would not have cared ; but now it would soon 
be night. He had no great dread of bears, 



i 4 8 THE SECRET TRAILS 

as a rule. He was willing to tackle several 
of them at once, as long as he had his Win- 
chester and a clear chance to use it — but after 
dark he would be at a grievous disadvantage. 
If the trail had still been leading away from 
home, he would probably have turned back 
and planned for an early start again next morn- 
ing. But as his enemy was going in the right 
direction, he decided to follow on as fast as 
possible, and see if he might not succeed in 
obtaining a decision before dark. 

The trail was now almost insolently clear, 
and he followed it at a lope. He gained no 
glimpse of the quarry even at this pace; but at 
least he had the satisfaction of knowing, from 
the increased heaviness of the footprints and 
the lengthening of the stride, that he was forc- 
ing his adversary to make haste. Presently it 
appeared that this was displeasing to the ad- 
versary. The trail went off to the left, at a 
sharp angle, and made for a dense cedar 
swamp, which Murray had no desire to ad- 
venture into at that late hour. He decided to 



THE TRAILERS 149 

give up the chase for the day and keep straight 
for home. 

By this time Murray felt that his knowledge 
of bears was not quite so profound as he had 
fancied it to be. Nevertheless, he was sure of 
one thing. He was ready to gamble on it that, 
as soon as they realized he had given up trail- 
ing them, they would turn and trail him. The 
idea was more or less depressing to him in his 
present mood. He did not greatly care, how- 
ever, so long as it was fairly light. He did 
not think that his adversaries would have the 
rashness to attack him even after dark, the 
black bear having a very just appreciation of 
man's power. Still, there was the chance, and 
it gave him something to think of. He made 
a hurried estimate of the distance he had yet 
to go, and it was with a distinct sense of relief 
he concluded that he would make the open 
fields before the closing in of dark. 

The woods at this point were somewhat 
thick, an abundant second growth of spruce 
and fir. Presently they fell away before him, 



150 THE SECRET TRAILS 

revealing a few acres of windy grass-land sur- 
rounding a deserted cabin. At the sight of the 
space of open ground Murray was seized with 
a new idea. His face brightened, his self- 
confidence returned. The bears had, so far, 
outdone him thoroughly in woodcraft. Well, 
he would now show them that he was their 
master in tactics. 

He ran staggeringly out into the field, and 
fell as if exhausted. He lay for a few seconds, 
to make sure he was observed by his antag- 
onists, then picked himself up, raced on across 
the open as fast as he could, and plunged into 
the thick woods on the opposite side. 

As soon as he was hidden, he turned and 
looked behind him. The growth of bushes 
and rank herbage which fringed the other side 
of the clearing whence he had come was wav- 
ing and tossing with the movement of heavy 
bodies. For a few moments he thought that 
his pursuers, grown bold with his flight, would 
break forth from their concealment and follow 
across the clearing. In that case he might 
count on bagging them both. 



THE TRAILERS 151 

But no, they were too wary still for that. 
Presently the tossing of the bushes began to 
separate, and moved rapidly both to right and 
left along the skirts of the clearing. A smile 
of triumph spread over Murray's face. 

"My turn at last!" he muttered, and ran 
noiselessly, keeping well hidden, down toward 
the left-hand corner of the field. He had an 
idea that it was the bigger bear which was com- 
ing to meet him in that direction, because the 
movement of the bushes had seemed the more 
violent on that side. He was himself again 
fully now, the zest of the hunter swallowing 
up all other emotions. 

Just at the corner of the field, behind a heap 
of stones half buried in herbage, he hid him- 
self, and lay motionless, with his rifle at his 
shoulder and finger on the trigger. He could 
hear the bear coming, for she was running 
more carelessly now, under the impression that 
the enemy was in full flight. Dry branches 
snapped, green branches swished and rustled, 
and occasionally his straining ears caught the 
sound of a heavy but muffled footfall. 



152 THE SECRET TRAILS 

She was almost upon him, however, before 
he could actually get a view of her. She came 
out into a space between two clumps of young 
fir trees, not twenty-five yards from his hiding- 
place, and was just passing him diagonally, 
offering a perfect mark. Murray's finger 
closed, softly and steadily, on the trigger. The 
heavy, soft-nosed bullet crashed through her 
neck, and she dropped, collapsing on the in- 
stant into nothing more than a heap of rusty- 
black fur. 

Immensely elated, his dear sheep avenged, 
and his standing as a hunter vindicated at last, 
young Murray strode over and examined his 
splendid prize. It was by far the biggest 
black bear he had ever seen. To the other of 
the pair he gave not a thought; he knew that 
the crack of his rifle would have cured it of 
any further curiosity it might have had about 
himself. He took out his handkerchief, tied 
it to the end of a stick, and stuck the stick into 
the ground beside the heap of fur, to serve both 
as a mark and as a warning to possible tres- 
passers. Then he made haste home, to fetch 



THE TRAILERS 153 

a lantern and the hired man, for he would not 
leave so splendid a skin all night to the mercies 
of fox and fisher and weasel and other foragers 
of the dark. 



Cock-Crow 

HE was a splendid bird, a thoroughbred 
"Black-breasted Red" game-cock, his 
gorgeous plumage hard as mail, silken with 
perfect condition, and glowing like a flame 
against the darkness of the spruce forest. His 
snaky head — the comb and wattles had been 
trimmed close, after the mode laid down for 
his aristocratic kind — was sharp and keen, like 
a living spear-point. His eyes were fierce and 
piercing, ready ever to meet the gaze of bird, 
or beast, or man himself, with the unwinking 
challenge of their full, arrogant stare. 

Perched upon a stump a few yards from the 
railway line, he turned that bold stare now, 
with an air of unperturbed superciliousness, 
upon the wreck of the big freight-car from 
which he had just escaped. He had escaped 
by a miracle, but little effect had that upon his 
bold and confident spirit The ramshackle, 

154 



COCK-CROW 155 

overladen freight train, labouring up the too- 
steep gradient, had broken in two, thanks to a 
defective coupler, near the top of the incline a 
mile and a half away. The rear cars — heavy 
box-cars — had, of course, run back, gathering 
a terrific momentum as they went. The rear 
brakeman, his brakes failing to hold, had dis- 
creetly jumped before the speed became too 
great. At the foot of the incline a sharp curve 
had proved too much for the runaways to ne- 
gotiate. With a screech of tortured metal they 
had jumped the track, and gone crashing down 
the high embankment. One car, landing on a 
granite boulder, had split apart like a cleft 
melon. The light crate in which our game- 
cock, a pedigree bird, was being carried to a 
fancier in the nearest town, some three score 
miles away, had survived by its very lightness. 
But its door had been snapped open. The 
cock walked out deliberately, uttered a long, 
low krr-rr-ee of ironic comment upon the dis- 
turbance, hopped delicately over the tangle of 
boxes and crates and agricultural implements, 
and flew to the top of the nearest stump. 



156 THE SECRET TRAILS 

There he shook himself, his plumage being dis- 
arrayed, though his spirit was not. He 
flapped his wings. Then, eyeing the wreck- 
age keenly, he gave a shrill, triumphant crow, 
which rang through the early morning still- 
ness of the forest like a challenge. He felt 
that the smashed car, so lately his prison, was 
a foe which he had vanquished by his own un- 
aided prowess. His pride was not altogether 
unnatural. 

The place where he stood preening the red 
glory of his plumage was in the very heart of 
the wilderness. The only human habitation 
within a dozen miles in either direction was a 
section-man's shanty, guarding a siding and a 
rusty water-tank. The woods — mostly spruce 
in that region, with patches of birch and pop- 
lar — had been gone over by the lumbermen 
some five years before, and still showed the 
ravages of the insatiable axe. Their narrow 
"tote-roads," now deeply mossed and partly 
overgrown by small scrub, traversed the lonely 
spaces in every direction. One of these roads 
led straight back into the wilderness from the 



COCK-CROW 157 

railway — almost from the stump whereon the 
red cock had his perch. 

The cock had no particular liking for the 
neighbourhood of the accident, and when his 
fierce, inquiring eye fell upon this road, he de- 
cided to investigate, hoping it might lead him 
to some flock of his own kind, over whom he 
would, as a matter of course, promptly estab- 
lish his domination. That there would be 
other cocks there, already in charge, only 
added to his zest for the adventure. He was 
raising his wings to hop down from his perch, 
when a wide-winged shadow passed over him, 
and he checked himself, glancing upwards 
sharply. 

A foraging hawk had just flown overhead. 
The hawk had never before seen a bird like 
the bright figure standing on the stump, and 
he paused in his flight, hanging for a moment 
on motionless wing to scrutinise the strange ap- 
parition. But he was hungry, and he consid- 
ered himself more than a match for anything in 
feathers except the eagle, the goshawk, and the 
great horned owl. His hesitation was but for 



158 THE SECRET TRAILS 

a second, and, with a sudden mighty thrust of 
his wide wings, he swooped down upon this 
novel victim. 

The big hawk was accustomed to seeing 
every quarry he stooped at cower paralysed 
with terror or scurry for shelter in wild panic. 
But, to his surprise, this infatuated bird on the 
stump stood awaiting him, with wings half 
lifted, neck feathers raised in a defiant ruff, 
and one eye cocked upwards warily. He was 
so surprised, in fact, that at a distance of some 
dozen or fifteen feet he wavered and paused 
in his downward rush. But it was surprise 
only, fear having small place in his wild, ma- 
rauding heart. In the next second he swooped 
again and struck downwards at his quarry with 
savage, steel-hard talons. 

He struck but empty air. At exactly the 
right fraction of the instant the cock had leapt 
upwards on his powerful wings, lightly as a 
thistle-seed, but swift as if shot from a catapult. 
He passed straight over his terrible assailant's 
back. In passing he struck downwards with 
his spurs, which were nearly three inches long, 



COCK-CROW 159 

straight, and tapered almost to a needle-point. 
One of these deadly weapons found its mark, 
as luck would have it, fair in the joint of the 
hawk's shoulder, putting the wing clean out of 
action. 

The marauder turned completely over and 
fell in a wild flutter to the ground, the cock, 
at the same time, alighting gracefully six or 
eight feet away and wheeling like a flash to 
meet a second attack. The hawk, recovering 
with splendid nerve from the amazing shock of 
his overthrow, braced himself upright on his 
tail by the aid of the one sound wing — the 
other wing trailing helplessly — and faced his 
strange adversary with open beak and one 
clutching talon uplifted. 

The cock, fighting after the manner of his 
kind, rushed in to within a couple of feet of 
his foe and there paused, balanced for the next 
stroke or parry, legs slightly apart, wings 
lightly raised, neck feathers ruffed straight out, 
beak lowered and presented like a rapier point. 
Seeing that his opponent made no demonstra- 
tion, but simply waited, watching him with 



160 THE SECRET TRAILS 

eyes as hard and bright and dauntless as his 
own, he tried to provoke him to a second at- 
tack. With scornful insolence he dropped his 
guard and pecked at a twig or a grass blade, 
jerking the unconsidered morsel aside and pre- 
senting his point again with lightning swift- 
ness. 

The insult, however, was lost upon the hawk, 
who had no knowledge of the cock's duelling 
code. He simply waited, motionless as the 
stump beside him. 

The cock, perceiving that taunt and inso- 
lence were wasted, now began to circle warily 
toward the left, as if to take his opponent in the 
flank. The hawk at once shifted front to face 
him. But this was the side of his disabled 
wing. The sprawling member would not 
move, would not get out of the way. In the 
effort to manage it, he partly lost his precarious 
balance. The cock saw his advantage in- 
stantly. He dashed in like a feathered and 
flaming thunderbolt, leaping upwards and 
striking downwards with his destroying heels. 
The hawk was hurled over backwards, with 




gp »^V -«u yp 




Leaping upwards and striking downwards with his destroy- 
ing heels. 



COCK-CROW 161 

one spur through his throat, the other through 
his lungs. As he fell he dragged his con- 
queror down with him, and one convulsive but 
blindly-clutching talon ripped away a strip of 
flesh and feathers from the victor's thigh. 
There was a moment's flapping, a few delicate 
red feathers floated off upon the morning air, 
then the hawk lay quite still, and the red cock, 
stepping haughtily off the body of his foe, 
crowed long and shrill, three times, as if chal- 
lenging any other champions of the wilderness 
to come and dare a like fate. 

For a few minutes he stood waiting and lis- 
tening for an answer to his challenge. As no 
answer came, he turned, without deigning to 
glance at his slain foe, and stalked off, stepping 
daintily, up the old wood-road and into the 
depths of the forest. To the raw, red gash in 
his thigh he paid no heed whatever. 

Having no inkling of the fact that the wil- 
derness, silent and deserted though it seemed, 
was full of hostile eyes and unknown perils, he 
took no care at all for the secrecy of his going. 
Indeed, had he striven for concealment, his 



162 THE SECRET TRAILS 

brilliant colouring, so out of key with the forest 
gloom, would have made it almost impossible. 
Nevertheless, his keenness of sight and hearing, 
his practised and unsleeping vigilance as pro- 
tector of his flock, stood him in good stead, and 
made up for his lack of wilderness lore. It 
was with an intense interest and curiosity, 
rather than with any apprehension, that his 
bold eyes questioned everything on either side 
of his path through the dark spruce woods. 
Sometimes he would stop to peck the bright 
vermilion bunches of the pigeon-berry, which 
here and there starred the hillocks beside the 
road. But no matter how interesting he found 
the novel and delicious fare, his vigilance never 
relaxed. It was, indeed, almost automatic. 
The idea lurking in his subconscious processes 
was probably that he might at any moment be 
seen by some doughty rival of his own kind, 
and challenged to the great game of mortal 
combat. But whatever the object of his 
watchfulness, it served him as well against the 
unknown as it could have done against ex- 
pected foes. 



COCK-CROW 163 

Presently he came to a spot where an old, 
half-rotted stump had been torn apart by a 
bear hunting for wood-ants. The raw earth 
about the up-torn roots tempted the wanderer 
to scratch for grubs. Finding a fat white 
morsel, much too dainty to be devoured alone, 
he stood over it and began to call kt-kt-kt, kt- 
kt-kt, kt-kt-kt in his most alluring tones, hop- 
ing that some coy young hen would come steal- 
ing out of the underbrush in response to his gal- 
lant invitation. There was no such response; 
but as he peered about hopefully, he caught 
sight of a sinister, reddish-yellow shape creep- 
ing towards him behind the shelter of a withe- 
wood bush. He gulped down the fat grub, 
and stood warily eyeing the approach of this 
new foe. 

It looked to him like a sharp-nosed, bushy- 
tailed yellow dog — a very savage and active 
one. He was not afraid, but he knew himself 
no match for a thoroughly ferocious dog of 
that size. This one, it was clear, had evil de- 
signs upon him. He half crouched, with 



1 64 THE SECRET TRAILS 

wings loosed and every muscle tense for the 
spring. 

The next instant the fox pounced at him, 
darting through the green edges of the withe- 
wood bush with most disconcerting suddenness. 
The cock sprang into the air, but only just in 
time, for the fox, leaping up nimbly at him 
with snapping jaws, captured a mouthful of 
glossy tail feathers. The cock alighted on a 
branch overhead, some seven or eight feet from 
the ground, whipped around, stretched his 
neck downwards, and eyed his assailant with a 
glassy stare. "Kr-rr-rr-eee?" he murmured 
softly, as if in sarcastic interrogation. The 
fox, exasperated at his failure, and hating, 
above all beasts, to be made a fool of, glanced 
around to see if there were any spectators. 
Then, with an air of elaborate indifference, he 
pawed a feather from the corner of his mouth 
and trotted away as if he had just remembered 
something. 

He had not gone above thirty yards or so, 
when the cock flew down again to the exact 
spot where he had been scratching. He pre- 



COCK-CROW 165 

tended to pick up another grub, all the time 
keeping an eye on the retiring foe. He 
crowed with studied insolence ; but the fox, al- 
though that long and shrill defiance must have 
seemed a startling novelty, gave no sign of hav- 
ing heard it. The cock crowed again, with 
the same lack of result. He kept on crowing 
until the fox was out of sight. Then he re- 
turned coolly to his scratching. When he had 
satisfied his appetite for fat white grubs, he 
flew up again to his safe perch and fell to 
pruning his feathers. Five minutes later the 
fox reappeared, creeping up with infinite 
stealth from quite another direction. The 
cock, however, detected his approach at once, 
and proclaimed the fact with another mocking 
crow. Disgusted and abashed, the fox turned 
in his tracks and crept away to stalk some less 
sophisticated quarry. 

The wanderer, for all his fearlessness, was 
wise. He suspected that the vicious yellow 
dog with the bushy tail might return yet again 
to the charge. For a time, therefore, he sat 
on his perch, digesting his meal and studying 



1 66 THE SECRET TRAILS 

with keen, inquisitive eyes his strange sur- 
roundings. After ten minutes or so of stillness 
and emptiness, the forest began to come alive. 
He saw a pair of black-and-white woodpeckers 
running up and down the trunk of a half-dead 
tree, and listened with tense interest to their 
loud rat-tat-tattings. He watched the shy 
wood-mice come out from their snug holes 
under the tree-roots, and play about with 
timorous gaiety and light rustlings among the 
dead leaves. He scrutinised with appraising 
care a big brown rabbit which came bounding 
in a leisurely fashion down the tote-road and 
sat up on his hindquarters near the stump, star- 
ing about with its mild, bulging eyes, and wav- 
ing its long ears this way and that, to question 
every minutest wilderness sound; and he de- 
cided that the rabbit, for all its bulk and ap- 
parent vigour of limb, would not be a danger- 
ous opponent. In fact, he thought of hopping 
down from his perch and putting the big in- 
nocent to flight, just to compensate himself for 
having had to flee from the fox. 

But while he was meditating this venture, 



COCK-CROW 167 

the rabbit went suddenly leaping off at a tre- 
mendous pace, evidently in great alarm. A 
few seconds later a slim little light-brownish 
creature, with short legs, long, sinuous body, 
short, triangular head, and cruel eyes that 
glowed like fire, came into view, following 
hard upon the rabbit's trail. It was nothing 
like half the rabbit's size, but the interested 
watcher on the branch overhead understood 
at once the rabbit's terror. He had never seen 
a weasel before, but he knew that the sinuous 
little beast with the eyes of death would be as 
dangerous almost as the fox. He noted that 
here was another enemy to look out for — to be 
avoided, if possible, to be fought with the ut- 
most wariness if fighting should be forced upon 
him. 

Not long after the weasel had vanished, the 
cock grew tired of waiting, and restless to re- 
new the quest for the flock on which his dreams 
were set. He started by flying from tree to 
tree, still keeping along the course of the tote- 
road. But after he had covered perhaps a 
half-mile in this laborious fashion, he gave it 



i68 THE SECRET TRAILS 

up and hopped down again into the road. 
Here he went now with new caution, but with 
the same old arrogance of eye and bearing. 
He went quickly, however, for the gloom of 
the spruce wood had grown oppressive to him, 
and he wanted open fields and the unrestricted 
sun. 

He had not gone far when he caught sight 
of a curious-looking animal advancing slowly 
down the path to meet him. It was nearly as 
big as the rabbit, but low on the legs ; and in- 
stead of leaping along, it crawled with a cer- 
tain heavy deliberation. Its colour was a 
dingy, greyish black-and-white, and its short 
black head was crowned with what looked like 
a heavy iron-grey pompadour brushed well 
back. The cock stood still, eyeing its ap- 
proach suspiciously. It did not look capable 
of any very swift demonstration, but he was on 
his guard. 

When it had come within three or four yards 
of him, he said "Kr-rr-rr-eee!" sharply, just to 
see what it would do, at the same time lowering 



COCK-CROW 169 

his snaky head and ruffing out his neck 
feathers in challenge. The stranger seemed 
then to notice him for the first time, and in- 
stantly, to the cock's vast surprise, it enlarged 
itself to fully twice its previous size. Its fur, 
which was now seen to be quills rather than 
fur, stood up straight on end all over its head 
and body, and the quills were two or three 
inches in length. At this amazing spectacle 
the cock involuntarily backed away several 
paces. The stranger came straight on, how- 
ever, without hastening his deliberate steps one 
jot. The cock waited, maintaining his atti- 
tude of challenge, till not more than three or 
four feet separated him from the incompre- 
hensible apparition. Then he sprang lightly 
over it and turned in a flash, expecting the 
stranger to turn also and again confront him. 
The stranger, however, did nothing of the 
kind, but simply continued stolidly on his way, 
not even troubling to look round. Such sto- 
lidity was more than the cock could under- 
stand, having never encountered a porcupine 



170 THE SECRET TRAILS 

before. He stared after it for some moments. 
Then he crowed scornfully, turned about, and 
resumed his lonely quest. 

A little further on, to his great delight, he 
came out into a small clearing with a log cabin 
in the centre of it. A house! It was associ- 
ated in his mind with an admiring, devoted 
flock of hens, and rivals to be ignominiously 
routed, and harmless necessary humans whose 
business it was to supply unlimited food. He 
rushed forward eagerly, careless as to whether 
he should encounter love or war. 

Alas, the cabin was deserted! Even to his 
inexperienced eye it was long deserted. The 
door hung on one hinge, half open. The one 
small window had no glass in it. Untrodden 
weeds grew among the rotting chips up to and 
across the threshold. The roof — a rough af- 
fair of poles and bark — sagged in the middle, 
just ready to fall in at the smallest provocation. 
A red squirrel, his tail carried jauntily over 
his back, sat on the topmost peak of it and 
shrilled high derision at the wanderer as he 
approached. 



COCK-CROW 171 

The cock was acquainted with squirrels, and 
thought less than nothing of them. Ignoring 
the loud chatter, he tip-toed around the cabin, 
dejected but still inquisitive. Returning at 
length to the doorway, he peered in, craning 
his neck and uttering a low kr-rr. Finally, 
with head held high, he stalked in. The place 
was empty, save for a long bench with a broken 
leg and a joint of rust-eaten stove-pipe. Along 
two of the walls ran a double tier of bunks, in 
which the lumbermen had formerly slept. 
The cock stalked all around the place, prying 
in every corner and murmuring softly to him- 
self. At last he flew up to the highest bunk, 
perched upon the edge of it, flapped his wings, 
and crowed repeatedly, as if announcing to the 
wilderness at large that he had taken posses- 
sion. This ceremony accomplished, he flew 
down again, stalked out into the sunlight, and 
fell to scratching among the chips with an air 
of assured possession. And all the while the 
red squirrel kept on hurling shrill, unheeded 
abuse at him, resenting him as an intruder in 
the wilds. 



172 THE SECRET TRAILS 

Whenever the cock found a particularly 
choice grub or worm or beetle, he would hold 
it aloft in his beak, then lay it down and call 
loudly kt-kt-kt-kt-kt-kt, as if hoping thus to 
lure some flock of hens to the fair domain 
which he had seized. He had now dropped 
his quest, and was trusting that his subjects 
would come to him. That afternoon his val- 
iant calls caught the ear of a weasel — possibly 
the very one which he had seen in the morning 
trailing the panic-stricken rabbit. The weasel 
came rushing upon him at once, too ferocious 
in its blood-lust for any such emotions as sur- 
prise or curiosity, and expecting an easy con- 
quest. The cock saw it coming, and knew well 
the danger. But he was now on his own 
ground, responsible for the protection of an 
imaginary flock. He faced the peril unwaver- 
ing. Fortunately for him, the weasel had no 
idea whatever of a fighting-cock's method of 
warfare. When the cock evaded the deadly 
rush by leaping straight at it and over it, in- 
stead of dodging aside or turning tail, the 
weasel was nonplussed for just a fraction of a 



COCK-CROW 173 

second, and stood snarling. In that instant of 
hesitation the cock's keen spur struck it fairly 
behind the ear, and drove clean into the brain. 
The murderous little beast stiffened out, rolled 
gently over upon its side, and lay there with 
the soundless snarl fixed upon its half-opened 
jaws. Surprised at such an easy victory, the 
cock spurred the carcase again, just to make 
sure of it. Then he kicked it to one side, 
crowed, of course, and stared around wistfully 
for some appreciation of his triumph. He 
could not know with what changed eyes the 
squirrel — who feared weasels more than any- 
thing else on earth — was now regarding him. 
The killing of so redoubtable an adversary 
as the weasel must have become known, in some 
mysterious fashion, for thenceforward no more 
of the small marauders of the forest ventured 
to challenge the new lordship of the clearing. 
For a week the cock ruled his solitude unques- 
tioned, very lonely, but sleeplessly alert, and 
ever hoping that followers of his own kind 
would come to him from somewhere. In 
time, doubtless, his loneliness would have 



174 THE SECRET TRAILS 

driven him forth again upon his quest; but 
Fate had other things in store for him. 

Late one afternoon a grizzled woodsman 
in grey homespun, and carrying a bundle 
swung from the axe over his shoulder, came 
striding up to the cabin. The cock, pleased 
to see a human being once more, stalked forth 
from the cabin door to meet him. The woods- 
man was surprised at the sight of what he 
called a "reel barn-yard rooster" away off here 
in the wilds, but he was too tired and hungry 
to consider the question carefully. His first 
thought was that there would be a pleasant ad- 
dition to his supper of bacon and biscuits. 
He dropped his axe and bundle, and made a 
swift grab at the unsuspecting bird. The lat- 
ter dodged cleverly, ruffed his neck feathers 
with an angry kr-rr-rr, hopped up, and spurred 
the offending hand severely. 

The woodsman straightened himself up, 
taken by surprise, and sheepishly shook the 
blood from his hand. 

"Well, I'll be damned!" he muttered, eyeing 
the intrepid cock with admiration. "You're 



COCK-CROW 175 

some rooster, you are! I guess you're all 
right. Guess I deserved that, for thinkin' of 
wringin' the neck o' sech a handsome an' gritty 
bird as you, an' me with plenty o' good bacon 
in me pack. Guess we'll call it square, eh?" 

He felt in his pocket for some scraps of bis- 
cuits, and tossed them to the cock, who picked 
them up greedily and then strutted around 
him, plainly begging for more. The biscuit 
was a delightful change after an unvarying 
diet of grubs and grass. Thereafter he fol- 
lowed his visitor about like his shadow, not 
with servility, of course, but with a certain 
condescending arrogance which the woodsman 
found hugely amusing. 

Just outside the cabin door the woodsman lit 
a fire to cook his evening rasher and brew his 
tin of tea. The cock supped with him, strid- 
ing with dignity to pick up the scraps which 
were thrown to him, and then resuming his 
place at the other side of the fire. By the time 
the man was done, dusk had fallen; and the 
cock, chuckling contentedly in his throat, tip- 
toed into the cabin, flew up to the top bunk, 



176 THE SECRET TRAILS 

and settled himself on his perch for the night. 
He had always been taught to expect benefits 
from men, and he felt that this big stranger 
who had fed him so generously would find him 
a flock to preside over on the morrow. 

After a long smoke beside his dying fire, till 
the moon came up above the ghostly solitude, 
the woodsman turned in to sleep in one of the 
lower bunks, opposite to where the cock 
was roosting. He had heaped an armful of 
bracken and spruce branches into the bunk be- 
fore spreading his blanket. And he slept very 
soundly. 

Even the most experienced of woodsmen 
may make a slip at times. This one, this time, 
had forgotten to make quite sure that his fire 
was out There was no wind when he went 
to bed, but soon afterwards a wind arose, blow- 
ing steadily toward the cabin. It blew the 
darkened embers to a glow, and little, harm- 
less-looking flames began eating their way over 
the top layer of tinder-dry chips to the equally 
dry wall of the cabin. 



COCK-CROW 177 

The cock was awakened by a bright light in 
his eyes. A fiery glow, beyond the reddest 
of sunrises, was flooding the cabin. Long 
tongues of flame were licking about the door- 
way. He crowed valiantly, to greet this splen- 
did, blazing dawn. He crowed again and yet 
again, because he was anxious and disturbed. 
As a sunrise, this one did not act at all accord- 
ing to precedent. 

The piercing notes aroused the man, who 
was sleeping heavily. In one instant he was 
out of his bunk and grabbing up his blanket 
and his pack. In the next he had plunged out 
through the flaming doorway, and thrown 
down his armful at a safe distance, cursing 
acidly at such a disturbance to the most com- 
fortable rest he had enjoyed for a week. 

From within the doomed cabin came once 
more the crow of the cock, shrilling daunt- 
lessly above the crackle and venomous hiss of 
the flames. 

"Gee whizz I" muttered the woodsman, or, 
rather, that may be taken as the polite equiva- 
lent of his untrammelled backwoods expletive. 



178 THE SECRET TRAILS 

"That there red rooster's game. Ye can't 
leave a pardner like that to roast!" 

With one arm shielding his face, he dashed 
in again, grabbed the cock by the legs, and 
darted forth once more into the sweet, chill air, 
none the worse except for frizzled eyelashes 
and an unceremonious trimming of hair and 
beard. The cock, highly insulted, was flap- 
ping and pecking savagely, but the man soon 
reduced him to impotence, if not submission, 
holding him under one elbow while he tied his 
armed heels together, and then swaddling him 
securely in his coat. 

"There," said he, "I guess we'll travel to- 
gether from this out, pardner. Ye've sure 
saved my life; an' to think I had the notion, 
for a minnit, o' makin' a meal off en ye! I'll 
give ye a good home, anyways, an' I guess 
ye'll lick the socks offen every other rooster 
in the whole blame Settlement!" 



The Ledge on Bald Face 

THAT one stark naked side of the moun- 
tain which gave it its name of Old Bald 
Face fronted full south. Scorched by sun and 
scourged by storm throughout the centuries, it 
was bleached to an ashen pallor that gleamed 
startlingly across the leagues of sombre, green- 
purple wilderness outspread below. From 
the base of the tremendous bald steep stretched 
off the interminable leagues of cedar swamp, 
only to be traversed in dry weather or in frost. 
All the region behind the mountain face was 
an impenetrable jumble of gorges, pinnacles, 
and chasms, with black woods clinging in crev- 
ice and ravine and struggling up desperately 
towards the light. 

In the time of spring and autumn floods, 
when the cedar swamps were impenetrable 
to all save mink, otter, and musk-rat, the only 

way from the western plateau to the group of 

179 



180 THE SECRET TRAILS 

lakes that formed the source of the Ottanoonsis, 
on the east, was by a high, nerve-testing trail 
across the wind-swept brow of Old Bald Face. 
The trail followed a curious ledge, sometimes 
wide enough to have accommodated an ox- 
wagon, at other times so narrow and so perilous 
that even the sure-eyed caribou went warily in 
traversing it. 

The only inhabitants of Bald Face were the 
eagles, three pairs of them, who had their nests, 
widely separated from each other in haughty 
isolation, on jutting shoulders and pinnacles 
accessible to no one without wings. Though 
the ledge-path at its highest point was far 
above the nests, and commanded a clear view 
of one of them, the eagles had learned to know 
that those who traversed the pass were 
not troubling themselves about eagles' nests. 
They had also observed another thing— of in- 
terest to them only because their keen eyes and 
suspicious brains were wont to note and con- 
sider everything that came within their pur- 
view — and that was that the scanty traffic by 
the pass had its more or less regular times and 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 181 

seasons. In seasons of drought or hard frost 
it vanished altogether. In seasons of flood it 
increased the longer the floods lasted. And 
whenever there was any passing at all, the 
movement was from east to west in the morn- 
ing, from west to east in the afternoon. 

This fact may have been due to some sort 
of dimly recognised convention among the 
wild kindreds, arrived at in some subtle way 
to avoid unnecessary — and necessarily deadly 
— rmisunderstanding and struggle. For the 
creatures of the wild seldom fight for fight- 
ing's sake. They fight for food, or, in the 
mating season, they fight in order that the best 
and strongest may carry off the prizes. 

But mere purposeless risk and slaughter 
they instinctively strive to avoid. The airy 
ledge across Bald Face, therefore, was not a 
place where the boldest of the wild kindred — 
the bear or the bull-moose, to say nothing of 
lesser champions — would wilfully invite the 
doubtful combat. If, therefore, it had been 
somehow arrived at that there should be no 
disastrous meetings, no face-to-face struggles 



182 THE SECRET TRAILS 

for the right of way, at a spot where dreadful 
death was inevitable for one or both of the 
combatants, that would have been in no way- 
inconsistent with the accepted laws and cus- 
toms of the wilderness. On the other hand, 
it is possible that this alternate easterly and 
westerly drift of the wild creatures — a scanty 
affair enough at best of times — across the front 
of Bald Face was determined in the first 
place, on clear days, by their desire not to 
have the sun in their eyes in making the diffi- 
cult passage, and afterwards hardened into 
custom. It was certainly better to have the 
sun behind one in treading the knife-edge pass 
above the eagles. 

Joe Peddler found it troublesome enough, 
that strong, searching glare from the un- 
clouded sun of early morning full in his eyes, 
as he worked over toward the Ottanoonsis 
lakes. He had never attempted the crossing 
of Old Bald Face before, and he had always 
regarded with some scorn the stories told by 
Indians of the perils of that passage. But al- 
ready, though he had accomplished but a 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 183 

small portion of his journey, and was still far 
from the worst of the pass, he had been forced 
to the conclusion that report had not exagger- 
ated the difficulties of his venture. However, 
he was steady of head and sure of foot, and 
the higher he went in that exquisitely clear, 
crisp air, the more pleased he felt with him- 
self. His great lungs drank deep of the tonic 
wind which surged against him rhythmically, 
and seemed to him to come unbroken from the 
outermost edges of the world. His eyes 
widened and filled themselves, even as his 
lungs, with the ample panorama that unfolded 
before them. He imagined — for the woods- 
man, dwelling so much alone, is apt to indulge 
some strange imaginings — that he could feel 
his very spirit enlarging, as if to take full 
measure of these splendid breadths of sunlit, 
wind-washed space. 

Presently, with a pleasant thrill, he observed 
that just ahead of him the ledge went round 
an abrupt shoulder of the rock-face at a point 
where there was a practically sheer drop of 
many hundreds of feet into what appeared a 



1 84 THE SECRET TRAILS 

feather-soft carpet of tree-tops. He looked 
shrewdly to the security of his footing as he 
approached, and also to the roughnesses of the 
rock above the ledge, in case a sudden violent 
gust should chance to assail him just at the 
turn. He felt that at such a spot it would be 
so easy — indeed, quite natural — to be whisked 
off by the sportive wind, whirled out into 
space, and dropped into that green carpet so 
far below. 

In his flexible oil-tanned "larrigans" of 
thick cow-hide, Peddler moved noiselessly as 
a wild-cat, even over the bare stone of the 
ledge. He was like a grey shadow drifting 
slowly across the bleached face of the preci- 
pice. As he drew near the bend of the trail, 
of which not more than eight or ten paces 
were now visible to him, he felt every nerve 
grow tense with exhilarating expectation. 
Yet, even so, what happened was the utterly 
unexpected. 

Around the bend before him, stepping 
daintily on her fine hooves, came a young doe. 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 185 

She completely blocked the trail just on that 
dizzy edge. 

Peddler stopped short, tried to squeeze him- 
self to the rock like a limpet, and clutched 
with fingers of iron at a tiny projection. 

The doe, for one second, seemed petrified 
with amazement. It was contrary to all tra- 
dition that she should be confronted on that 
trail. Then, her amazement instantly dissolv- 
ing into sheer madness of panic, she wheeled 
about violently to flee. But there was no room 
for even her lithe body to make the turn. The 
inexorable rock-face bounced her off, and with 
an agonised bleat, legs sprawling and great 
eyes starting from their sockets, she went sail- 
ing down into the abyss. 

With a heart thumping in sympathy, Ped- 
dler leaned outward and followed that dread- 
ful flight, till she reached that treacherously 
soft-looking carpet of tree-tops and was en- 
gulfed by it. A muffled crash came up to 
Peddler's ears. 

"Poor leetle beggar!" he muttered. "I 



186 THE SECRET TRAILS 

wish't I hadn't scared her so. But I'd a sight 
rather it was her than me!" 

Peddler's exhilaration was now consider- 
ably damped. He crept cautiously to the 
dizzy turn of the ledge and peered around. 
The thought upon which his brain dwelt with 
unpleasant insistence was that if it had been 
a surly old bull-moose or a bear which had 
confronted him so unexpectedly, instead of 
that nervous little doe, he might now be lying 
beneath that deceitful green carpet in a state 
of dilapidation which he did not care to con- 
template. 

Beyond the turn the trail was clear to his 
view for perhaps a couple of hundred yards. 
It climbed steeply through a deep re-entrant, 
a mighty perpendicular corrugation of the 
rock-face, and then disappeared again around 
another jutting bastion. He hurried on rather 
feverishly, not liking that second interruption 
to his view, and regretting, for the first time, 
that he had no weapon with him but his long 
hunting-knife. He had left his rifle behind 
him as a useless burden to his climbing. No 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 187 

game was now in season, no skins in condition 
to be worth the shooting, and he had food 
enough for the journey in his light pack. He 
had not contemplated the possibility of any 
beast, even bear or bull-moose, daring to face 
him, because he knew that, except in mating- 
time, the boldest of them would give a man 
wide berth. But, as he now reflected, here on 
this narrow ledge even a buck or a lynx would 
become dangerous, finding itself suddenly at 
bay. 

The steepness of the rise in the trail at this 
point almost drove Peddler to helping him- 
self with his hands. As he neared the next 
turn, he was surprised to note, far out to his 
right, a soaring eagle, perhaps a hundred feet 
below him. He was surprised, too, by the 
fact that the eagle was paying no attention to 
him whatever, in spite of his invasion of the 
great bird's aerial domain. Instinctively he 
inferred that the eagle's nest must be in some 
quite inaccessible spot at safe distance from 
the ledge. He paused to observe from above, 
and thus fairly near at hand, the slow flapping 



188 THE SECRET TRAILS 

of those wide wings, as they employed the 
wind to serve the majesty of their flight. 
While he was studying this, another deduction 
from the bird's indifference to his presence 
flashed upon his mind. There must be a fairly 
abundant traffic of the wild creatures across 
this pass, or the eagle would not be so indiffer- 
ent to his presence. At this thought he lost 
his interest in problems of flight, and hurried 
forward again, anxious to see what might be 
beyond the next turn of the trail. 

His curiosity was gratified all too abruptly 
for his satisfaction. He reached the turn, 
craned his head around it, and came face to 
face with an immense black bear. 

The bear was not a dozen feet away. At 
sight of Peddler's gaunt dark face and sharp 
blue eyes appearing thus abruptly and without 
visible support around the rock, he shrank 
back upon his haunches with a startled "woof ." 

As for Peddler, he was equally startled, but 
he had too much discretion and self-control to 
show it. Never moving a muscle, and keep- 
ing his body out of sight so that his face 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 189 

seemed to be suspended in mid-air, he held 
the great beast's eyes with a calm, unwinking 
gaze. 

The bear was plainly disconcerted. After a 
few seconds he glanced back over his shoulder, 
and seemed to contemplate a strategic move- 
ment to the rear. As the ledge at this point 
was sufficiently wide for him to turn with due 
care, Peddler expected now to see him do so. 
But what Peddler did not know was that dim 
but cogent "law of the ledge," which forbade 
all those who travelled by it to turn and re- 
trace their steps, or to pass in the wrong direc- 
tion at the wrong time. He did not know 
what the bear knew namely — that if that per- 
turbed beast should turn, he was sure to be met 
and opposed by other wayfarers, and thus to 
find himself caught between two fires. 

Watching steadily, Peddler was unpleas- 
antly surprised to see the perturbation in the 
bear's eyes slowly change into a savage resent- 
ment — resentment at being baulked in his in- 
alienable right to an unopposed passage over 
the ledge. To the bear's mind that grim, con- 



190 THE SECRET TRAILS 

fronting face was a violation of the law which 
he himself obeyed loyally and without ques- 
tion. To be sure, it was the face of man, and 
therefore to be dreaded. It was also mys- 
terious, and therefore still more to be dreaded. 
But the sense of bitter injustice, with the real- 
isation that he was at bay and taken at a dis- 
advantage, filled him with a frightened rage 
which swamped all other emotion. Then he 
came on. 

His advance was slow and cautious by rea- 
son of the difficulty of the path and his dread 
lest that staring, motionless face should pounce 
upon him just at the perilous turn and hurl 
him over the brink. But Peddler knew that 
his bluff was called, and that his only chance 
was to avoid the encounter. He might have 
fled by the way he had come, knowing that he 
would have every advantage in speed on that 
narrow trail. But before venturing up to the 
turn he had noted a number of little projec- 
tions and crevices in the perpendicular wall 
above him. Clutching at them with fingers 
of steel and unerring toes, he swarmed up- 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 191 

wards as nimbly as a climbing cat. He was a 
dozen feet up before the bear came crawling 
and peering around the turn. 

Elated at having so well extricated himself 
from so dubious a situation, Peddler gazed 
down upon his opponent and laughed mock- 
ingly. The sound of that confident laughter 
from straight above his head seemed to daunt 
the bear and thoroughly damp his rage. He 
crouched low, and scurried past growling. 
As he hurried along the trail at a rash pace, 
he kept casting anxious glances over his shoul- 
der, as if he feared the man were going to 
chase him. Peddler lowered himself from 
his friendly perch and continued his journey, 
cursing himself more than ever for having 
been such a fool as not to bring his rifle. 

In the course of the next half-hour he gained 
the highest point of the ledge, which here was 
so broken and precarious that he had little at- 
tention to spare for the unparalleled sweep 
and splendour of the view. He was conscious, 
however, all the time, of the whirling eagles, 
now far below him, and his veins thrilled with 



192 THE SECRET TRAILS 

intense exhilaration. His apprehensions had 
all vanished under the stimulus of that tonic 
atmosphere. He was on the constant watch, 
however, scanning not only the trail ahead — 
which was now never visible for more than a 
hundred yards or so at a time — and also the 
face of the rock above him, to see if it could 
be scaled in an emergency. 

He had no expectation of an emergency, 
because he knew nothing of the law of the 
ledge. Having already met a doe and a bear, 
he naturally inferred that he would not be 
likely to meet any other of the elusive kindreds 
of the wild, even in a whole week of forest 
faring. The shy and wary beasts are not given 
to thrusting themselves upon man's dangerous 
notice, and it was hard enough to find them, 
with all his woodcraft, even when he was out 
to look for them. He was, therefore, so sur- 
prised that he could hardly believe his eyes 
when, on rounding another corrugation of the 
rock-face, he saw another bear coming to meet 
him. 

"Gee!" muttered Peddler to himself. 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 193 

" Who's been lettin' loose the menagerie? Or 
hev I got the nightmare, mebbe?" 

The bear was about fifty yards distant — a 
smaller one than its predecessor, and much 
younger also, as was obvious to Peddler's 
initiated eye by the trim glossiness of its coat. 
It halted the instant it caught sight of Peddler. 
But Peddler, for his part, kept right on, with- 
out showing the least sign of hesitation or sur- 
prise. This bear, surely, would give way be- 
fore him. The beast hesitated, however. It 
was manifestly afraid of the man. It backed 
a few paces, whimpering in a worried fashion, 
then stopped, staring up the rock-wall above 
it, as if seeking escape in that impossible direc- 
tion. 

"If ye're so skeered o' me as ye look," de- 
manded Peddler, in a crisp voice, "why in 
h — 11 don't ye turn an' vamoose, 'stead o' 
backin' an' fillin' that way? Ye can't git up 
that there rock, 'less ye're a fly." 

The ledge at that point was a comparatively 
wide and easy path; and the bear at length, 
as if decided by the easy confidence of Ped- 



i 9 4 THE SECRET TRAILS 

dler's tones, turned and retreated. But it went 
off with such reluctance, whimpering anx- 
iously the while, that Peddler was forced to 
the conclusion there must be something com- 
ing up the trail which it was dreading to meet. 
At this idea Peddler was delighted, and hur- 
ried on as closely as possible at the retreating 
animal's heels. The bear, he reflected, would 
serve him as an excellent advance guard, pro- 
tecting him perfectly from surprise, and per- 
haps, if necessary, clearing the way for him. 
He chuckled to himself as he realised the situ- 
ation, and the bear, catching the incompre- 
hensible sound, glanced nervously over its 
shoulder and hastened its retreat as well as the 
difficulties of the path would allow. 

The trail was now descending rapidly, 
though irregularly, towards the eastern pla- 
teau. The descent was broken by here and 
there a stretch of comparatively level going, 
here and there a sharp though brief rise, and 
at one point the ledge was cut across by a 
crevice some four feet in width. As a jump, 
of course, it was nothing to Peddler; but in 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 195 

spite of himself he took it with some trepida- 
tion, for the chasm looked infinitely deep, and 
the footing on the other side narrow and pre- 
carious. The bear, however, had seemed to 
take it quite carelessly, almost in its stride, and 
Peddler, not to be outdone, assumed a similar 
indifference. 

It was not long, however, before the enigma 
of the bear's reluctance to retrace its steps was 
solved. The bear, with Peddler some forty 
or fifty paces behind, was approaching one of 
those short steep rises which broke the general 
descent. From the other side of the rise came 
a series of heavy breathings and windy grunts. 

"Moose, by gum!" exclaimed Peddler. 
"Now, I'd like to know if all the critters hev 
took it into their heads to cross Old Bald Face 
to-day!" 

The bear heard the gruntlings also, and 
halted unhappily, glancing back at Peddler. 

"Git on with it!" ordered Peddler sharply. 
And the bear, dreading man more than moose, 
got on. 

The next moment a long, dark, ominous 



196 THE SECRET TRAILS 

head, with massive, overhanging lip and small 
angry eyes, appeared over the rise. Behind 
this formidable head laboured up the mighty 
humped shoulders and then the whole tower- 
ing form of a moose-bull. Close behind him 
followed two young cows and a yearling calf. 

"Huh! I guess there's goin' to be some 
row!" muttered Peddler, and cast his eyes up 
the rock-face, to look for a point of refuge in 
case his champion should get the worst of it. 

At sight of the bear the two cows and the 
yearling halted, and stood staring, with big 
ears thrust forward anxiously, at the foe that 
barred their path. But the arrogant old bull 
kept straight on, though slowly, and with the 
wariness of the practised duellist. At this 
season of the year his forehead wore no antlers, 
indeed, but in his great knife-edged fore- 
hooves he possessed terrible weapons which he 
could wield with deadly dexterity. Marking 
the confidence of his advance, Peddler grew 
solicitous for his own champion, and stood mo- 
tionless, dreading to distract the bear's atten- 
tion. 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 197 

But the bear, though frankly afraid to face 
man, whom he did not understand, had no 
such misgivings in regard to moose. He knew 
how to fight moose, and he had made more 
than one good meal, in his day, on moose calf. 
He was game for the encounter. Reassured 
to see that the man was not coming any nearer, 
and possibly even sensing instinctively that the 
man was on his side in this matter, he crouched 
close against the rock and waited, with one 
huge paw upraised, like a boxer on guard, for 
the advancing bull to attack. 

He had not long to wait. 

The bull drew near very slowly, and with 
his head held high as if intending to ignore his 
opponent. Peddler, watching intently, felt 
some surprise at this attitude, even though he 
knew that the deadliest weapon of a moose was 
its fore-hooves. He was wondering, indeed, 
if the majestic beast expected to press past the 
bear without a battle, and if the bear, on his 
part, would consent to this highly reasonable 
arrangement. Then like a flash, without the 
slightest warning, the bull whipped up one 



198 THE SECRET TRAILS 

great hoof to the height of his shoulder and 
struck at his crouching adversary. 

The blow was lightning swift, and with such 
power behind it that, had it reached its mark, 
it would have settled the whole matter then 
and there. But the bear's parry was equally 
swift. His mighty forearm fended the stroke 
so that it hissed down harmlessly past his head 
and clattered on the stone floor of the trail. 
At the same instant, before the bull could re- 
cover himself for another such pile-driving 
blow, the bear, who had been gathered up like 
a coiled spring, elongated his body with all 
the force of his gigantic hindquarters, thrust- 
ing himself irresistibly between his adversary 
and the face of the rock, and heaving out- 
wards. 

These were tactics for which the great bull 
had no precedent in all his previous battles. 
He was thrown off his balance and shouldered 
clean over the brink. By a terrific effort he 
turned, captured a footing upon the edge with 
his fore-hooves, and struggled frantically to 
drag himself up again upon the ledge. But 



THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE 199 

the bear's paw struck him a crashing buffet 
straight between the wildly staring eyes. He 
fell backwards, turning clean over, and went 
bouncing, in tremendous sprawling curves, 
down into the abyss. 

Upon the defeat of their leader the two 
cows and the calf turned instantly — which the 
ledge at this point was wide enough to permit 
— and fled back down the trail at a pace which 
seemed to threaten their own destruction. 
The bear followed more prudently, with no 
apparent thought of trying to overtake them. 
And Peddler kept on behind him, taking care, 
however, after this exhibition of his cham- 
pion's powers, not to press him too closely. 

The fleeing herd soon disappeared from 
view. It seemed to have effectually cleared 
the trail before it, for the curious procession 
of the bear and Peddler encountered no fur- 
ther obstacles. 

After about an hour the lower slopes of the 
mountain were reached. The ledge widened 
and presently broke up, with trails leading off 
here and there among the foothills. At the 



200 THE SECRET TRAILS 

first of these that appeared to offer conceal- 
ment the bear turned aside and vanished into 
a dense grove of spruce with a haste which 
seemed to Peddler highly amusing in a ueast 
of such capacity and courage. He wa^ con- 
tent, however, to be so easily quit of his dan- 
gerous advance guard. 

"A durn good thing for me," he mused, 
"that that there b'ar never got up the nerve to 
call my bluff, or I might 'a' been layin' now 
where that unlucky old bull-moose is layin', 
with a lot o' flies crawlin' over me." 

And as he trudged along the now easy and 
ordinary trail, he registered two discreet reso- 
lutions — first, that never again would he cross 
Old Bald Face without his gun and his axe; 
and second, that never again would he cross 
Old Bald Face at all, unless he jolly well 
had to. 



The Morning of the Silver Frost 

ALL night the big buck rabbit — he was 
**> really a hare, but the backwoodsman 
called him a rabbit — had been squatting on his 
form under the dense branches of a young fir 
tree. The branches grew so low that their 
tips touched the snow all round him, giving 
him almost perfect shelter from the drift of 
the storm. The storm was one of icy rain, 
which everywhere froze instantly as it fell. 
All night it had been busy encasing the whole 
wilderness — every tree and bush and stump, 
and the snow in every open meadow or patch 
of forest glade — in an armour of ice, thick 
and hard and glassy clear. And the rabbit, 
crouching motionless, save for an occasional 
forward thrust of his long, sensitive ears, had 
slept in unwonted security, knowing that none 
of his night-prowling foes would venture forth 
from their lairs on such a night. 

201 



202 THE SECRET TRAILS 

At dawn the rain stopped. The cold deep- 
ened to a still intensity. The clouds lifted 
along the eastern horizon, and a thin, icy flood 
of saffron and palest rose washed down across 
the glittering desolation. The wilderness was 
ablaze on the instant with elusive tongues and 
points of coloured light — jewelled flames, not 
of fire, but of frost. The world had become 
a palace of crystal and opal, a dream-palace 
that would vanish at a touch, a breath. And, 
indeed, had a wind arisen then to breathe upon 
it roughly, the immeasurable crystal would 
have shattered as swiftly as a dream, the too- 
rigid twigs and branches would have snapped 
and clattered down in ruin. 

The rabbit came out from under his little 
ice-clad fir tree, and, for all his caution, the 
brittle twigs broke about him as he emerged, 
and tinkled round him sharply. The thin, 
light sound was so loud upon the stillness that 
he gave a startled leap into the air, landing 
many feet away from his refuge. He slipped 
and sprawled, recovered his foothold, and 
stood quivering, his great, prominent eyes try- 



THE SILVER FROST 203 

ing to look in every direction at once, his ears 
questioning anxiously to and fro, his nostrils 
twitching for any hint of danger. 

There was no sight, sound, or scent, how- 
ever, to justify his alarm, and in a few seconds, 
growing bolder, he remembered that he was 
hungry. Close by he noticed the tips of a lit- 
tle birch sapling sticking up above the snow. 
These birch-tips, in winter, were his favourite 
food. He hopped toward them, going cir- 
cumspectly over the slippery surface, and sat 
up on his hindquarters to nibble at them. To 
his intense surprise and disappointment, each 
twig and aromatic bud was sealed away, inac- 
cessible, though clearly visible, under a quar- 
ter inch of ice. Twig after twig he in- 
vestigated with his inquiring, sensitive cleft 
nostrils, which met everywhere the same chill 
reception. Round and round the tantalising 
branch he hopped, unable to make out the 
situation. At last, thoroughly disgusted, he 
turned his back on the treacherous birch bush 
and made for another, some fifty yards down 
the glade. 



2o 4 THE SECRET TRAILS 

As he reached it he stopped short, suddenly 
rigid, his head half turned over his shoulder, 
every muscle gathered like a spring wound up 
to extreme tension. His bulging eyes had 
caught a movement somewhere behind him, 
beyond the clump of twigs which he had just 
left Only for a second did he remain thus 
rigid. Then the spring was loosed. With a 
frantic bound he went over and through the 
top of the bush. The shattered and scattered 
crystals rang sharply on the shining snowcrust. 
And he sped away in panic terror among the 
silent trees. 

From behind the glassy twigs emerged an- 
other form, snow-white like the fleeting rab- 
bit, and fled in pursuit — not so swiftly, indeed, 
as the rabbit — with an air of implacable 
purpose that made the quarry seem already 
doomed. The pursuer was much smaller 
than his intended victim, very low on the legs, 
long-bodied, slender, and sinuous, and he 
moved as if all compacted of whipcord mus- 
cle. The grace of his long, deliberate bounds 
was indescribable. His head was triangular 



THE SILVER FROST 205 

in shape, the ears small and close-set, the black- 
tipped muzzle sharply pointed, with the thin, 
black lips upcurled to show the white fangs 
as if in a ferocious but soundless snarl, and the 
eyes glowed red with blood-lust. Small as it 
was, there was something terrible about the 
tiny beast, and its pursuit seemed as inevitable 
as Fate. At each bound its steel-hard claws 
scratched sharply on the crystal casing of the 
snow, and here and there an icicle from a 
snapped twig went ringing silverly across the 
gleaming surface. 

For perhaps fifty yards the weasel followed 
straight upon the rabbit's track. Then he 
swerved to the right. He had lost sight of his 
quarry. But he knew its habits in flight. He 
knew it would run in a circle, and he took a 
chord of that circle, so as to head the fugitive 
off. He knew he might have to repeat this 
manoeuvre several times, but he had no doubts 
as to the result. In a second or two he also 
had disappeared among the azure shadows 
and pink-and-saffron gleams of the ice-clad 
forest. 



206 THE SECRET TRAILS 

For several minutes the glade was empty, 
still as death, with the bitter but delicate 
glories of the winter dawn flooding ever more 
radiantly across it. On a sudden the rabbit 
appeared again, this time at the opposite side 
of the glade. He was running irresolutely 
now, with little aimless leaps to this side and 
to that, and his leaps were short and lifeless, as 
if his nerve-power were getting paralysed. 
About the middle of the glade he seemed to 
give up altogether, as if conquered by sheer 
panic. He stopped, hesitated, wheeled round, 
and crouched flat upon the naked snow, trem- 
bling violently, and staring, with eyes that 
started from his head, at the point in the woods 
which he had just emerged from. 

A second later the grim pursuer appeared. 
He saw his victim awaiting him, but he did 
not hurry his pace by a hairVbreadth. With 
the same terrible deliberation he approached. 
Only his jaws opened, his long fangs glistened 
bare; a blood-red globule of light glowed 
redder at the back of his eyes. 

One more of those inexorable bounds, and 



THE SILVER FROST 207 

he would have been at his victim's throat. 
The rabbit screamed. 

At that instant, with a hissing sound, a dark 
shadow dropped out of the air. It struck the 
rabbit. He was enveloped in a dreadful flap- 
ping of wings. Iron talons, that clutched and 
bit like the jaws of a trap, seized him by the 
back. He felt himself partly lifted from 
the snow. He screamed again. But now he 
struggled convulsively, no longer submissive 
to his doom, the hypnotic spell cast upon him 
by the weasel being broken by the shock of the 
great hawk's unexpected attack. 

But the weasel was not of the stuff or tem- 
per to let his prey be snatched thus from his 
jaws. Cruel and wanton assassin though he 
was, ever rejoicing to kill for the lust of kill- 
ing, long after his hunger was satisfied, he had 
the courage of a wounded buffalo. A mere 
darting sliver of white, he sprang straight into 
the blinding confusion of those great wings. 

He secured a hold just under one wing, 
where the armour of feathers was thinnest, 
and began to gnaw inwards with his keen 



208 THE SECRET TRAILS 

fangs. With a startled cry, the hawk freed 
her talons from the rabbit's back and clutched 
frantically at her assailant. The rabbit, 
writhing out from under the struggle, went 
leaping off into cover, bleeding copiously, but 
carrying no fatal hurt. He had recovered his 
wits, and had no idle curiosity as to how the 
battle between his enemies would turn out. 

The hawk, for all her great strength and 
the crushing superiority of her weapons, had 
a serious disadvantage of position. The 
weasel, maintaining his deadly grip and work- 
ing inwards like a bull-dog, had hunched up 
his lithe little body so that she could not reach 
it with her talons. She tore furiously at his 
back with her rending beak, but the amazingly 
tough, rubbery muscles resisted even that 
weapon to a certain degree. At last, securing 
a grip with her beak upon her adversary's 
thigh, she managed to pull the curled-up body 
out almost straight, and so secured a grip upon 
it with one set of talons. 

That grip was crushing, irresistible, but it 
was too far back to be immediately fatal. The 



THE SILVER FROST 209 

weasel's lithe body lengthened out under the 
agonising stress of it, but it could not pull his 
jaws from their grip. They continued inex- 
orably their task of gnawing inwards, ever 
inwards, seeking a vital spot. 

The struggle went on in silence, as far as the 
voices of both combatants were concerned. 
But the beating of the hawk's wings resounded 
on the glassy-hard surface of the snow. As 
the struggle shifted ground, those flapping 
wings came suddenly in contact with a bush, 
whose iced twigs were brittle as glass and glit- 
tering like the prisms of a great crystal cande- 
labra. There was a shrill crash and a thin, 
ringing clatter as the twigs shattered off and 
spun flying across the crust. 

The sound carried far through the still, iri- 
descent spaces of the wilderness. It reached 
the ears of a foraging fox, who was tip-toeing 
with dainty care over the slippering crust. 
He turned hopefully to investigate, trusting 
to get a needed breakfast out of some fellow- 
marauder's difficulties. At the edge of the 
glade he paused, peering through a bush of 



210 THE SECRET TRAILS 

crystal fire to size up the situation before com- 
mitting himself to the venture. 

Desperately preoccupied though she was, 
the hawk's all-seeing eyes detected the red out- 
lines of the fox through the bush. With a 
frantic beating of her wings she lifted herself 
from the snow. The fox darted upon her with 
a lightning rush and a shattering of icicles. 
He was just too late. The great bird was al- 
ready in the air, carrying her deadly burden 
with her. The fox leapt straight upwards, 
hoping to pull her down, but his clashing jaws 
just failed to reach her talons. Labouring 
heavily in her flight, she made off, striving to 
gain a tree-top where she might perch and 
once more give her attention to the gnawing 
torment which clung beneath her wing. 

The fox, being wise, and seeing that the 
hawk was in extremest straits, ran on beneath 
her as she flew, gazing upwards expectantly. 

The weasel, meanwhile, with that deadly 
concentration of purpose which characterises 
his tribe, paid no heed to the fact that he was 
journeying through the air. And he knew 



THE SILVER FROST 211 

nothing of what was going on below. His 
flaming eyes were buried in his foe's feathers, 
his jaws were steadily working inwards toward 
her vitals. 

Just at the edge of the glade, immediately 
over the top of a branchy young paper-birch 
which shot a million coloured points of light 
in the sunrise, the end came. The fangs of 
the weasel met in the hawk's wildly throbbing 
heart. With a choking burst of scarlet blood 
it stopped. 

Stone dead, the great marauder of the air 
crashed down through the slim birch-top, with 
a great scattering of gleams and crystals. 
With wide-sprawled wings she thudded down 
upon the snow-crust, almost under the fox's 
complacent jaws. The weasel's venomous 
head, covered with blood, emerged trium- 
phant from the mass of feathers. 

As the victor writhed free, the fox, pouncing 
upon him with a careless air, seized him by 
the neck, snapped it neatly, and tossed the 
long, limp body aside upon the snow. He 
had no use for the rank, stringy meat of the 



212 THE SECRET TRAILS 

weasel when better fare was at hand. Then 
he drew the hawk close to the trunk of the 
young birch, and lay down to make a leisurely 
breakfast. 



THE END 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



T 



HE following pages contain advertisements of 
books by the same author or on kindred subjects. 



Neighbors Unknown 

By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

AUTHOR OF "KINGS IN EXILE," "HOOF AND CLAW," ETC 

Decorated cloth, illustrated, i2mo, $1.50 
"Mr. Roberts knows his animals intimately and writes 
about them with understanding and reality. ,, — The Continent. 
"Whether viewed as stories, as natural history, or as litera- 
ture, young and old should lose no time in making the ac- 
quaintance of 'Neighbors Unknown.' " — N. Y. Times. 

"Few stories about animals have as strong a power to inter- 
est and entertain or carry as deep a conviction of their truth 
and reasonableness as those by Charles G. D. Roberts, which 
comprise the volume 'Neighbors Unknown/ " — Chicago Trib- 
une. 

"What observation, what power of description is displayed 
in Charles G. D. Roberts's latest volume of stories!" — 
Bellman. 



Hoof and Claw 



By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

AUTHOR OF "KINGS IN EXILE," "NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN," ETC. 

With illustrations by Paul Bransom 
///., decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.35 
"Whoever loves the wilderness and its furred and feathered 
inhabitants is always glad to know of a new book by Charles 
G. D. Roberts, whose knowledge and sympathy with wild 
things is profound, but who never falls into that danger of 
humanizing his characters." — Spring-field Republican. 

"A great deal of keen observation has evidently gone into 
the making of these tales . . . city dwellers owe to this sort 
of book a debt which they probably will never sufficiently 
pay, and that is to read them." — Chicago Evening Post. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

THE BACKWOODSMEN 

Illustrated. Cloth. i2mo, $1.50 
Juvenile Library $.50 

" The Backwoodsmen' shows that the writer knows the back- 
woods as the sailor knows the sea. Indeed, his various 
studies of wild life in general, whether cast in the world of 
short sketch or story or full-length narrative, have always 
secured an interested public. . . . Mr. Roberts possesses a 
keen artistic sense which is especially marked when he is 
rounding some story to its end. There is never a word too 
much, and he invariably stops when the stop should be made. 
. . . Few writers exhibit such entire sympathy with the nature 
of beasts and birds as he." — Boston Herald. 

"When placed by the side of the popular novel, the strength 
of these stories causes them to stand out like a huge primi- 
tive giant by the side of a simpering society miss, and while 
the grace and beauty of the girl may please the eye for a 
moment, it is to the rugged strength of the primitive man 
your eyes will turn to glory in his power and simplicity. In 
simple, forceful style Mr. Roberts takes the reader with him 
out into the cold, dark woods, through blizzards, stalking 
game, encountering all the dangers of the backwoodsmen's 
life, and enjoying the close contact with Nature in all her 
moods. His descriptions are so vivid that you can almost 
feel the tang of the frosty air, the biting sting of the snowy 
sleet beating on your face, you can hear the crunch of the 
snow beneath your feet, and when, after heartlessly exposing 
you to the elements, he lets you wander into camp with the 
characters of the story, you stretch out and bask in the warmth 
and cheer of the fire." — Western Review. 

KINGS IN EXILE 

The Macmillan Fiction Library, 111., i2mo, $.50 
Illustrated. Cloth. i2mo, $1.50 

"More wonderful animal tales such as only Mr. Roberts 
can relate. With accurate knowledge of the exiled beasts 
and a vivid imagination, the author writes stories that are 
even more than usually interesting." — Book News Monthly. 

"It is surprising how much of the wilderness his wistful eye 
discovers in a Central Park buffalo yard. For this gift of 
vision the book will be read, a vision with its reminder of the 
scent of dark forests of fir, the awful and majestic loneliness 
of sky-towering peaks, the roar of the breakers and salty 
smell of the sea, the whispering silences of the forests. We 
rise from its pages with the breath of the open spaces in our 
lungs." — Boston Transcript. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 
Author of "Kings in Exile," "The Backwoodsmen," Etc, 



Children of The Wild 

With illustrations j cloth, i2mo, $1.35 

As might be inferred from the title of Charles G. D. Roberts' 
new book, "Children of the Wild," the reader is brought very close 
to nature. Mr. Roberts has written many stories about the wild, all 
of which have the atmosphere which few writers are able to breathe 
into their books — the atmosphere of outdoor life told with the sure 
touch of a recognized authority. Here he writes for boys particu- 
larly, still of the creatures of the forests and streams, but with a boy 
as the central human figure. Babe and his Uncle Andy and Bill, 
the guide, are camping in the wilderness. What they see and hear 
there suggest stories about young animals, the "children of the wild." 
These tales are recounted by Uncle Andy. In them Mr. Roberts 
shows that he knows his fellowmen fully as well as he knows the lore 
of the woods and the haunts and habits of the animals of the forest. 
Into his stories creep snatches of humor, glimpses of tragedy, and 
the poignant touch of pathos, all of which make his work natural. 
The present work should prove a most acceptable remembrance to 
every boy who cares, and what boy does not, for a hearty book of 
outdoor life. 



The Feet of the Furtive 

Decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.35 

Illustrated by Paul Bransom 

It is to be doubted whether there is a more popular animal writer 
to-day than Charles G. D. Roberts, whose stories of forests and 
streams are read with pleasure by young and old alike. In his 
present book are tales of the bear, the bat, the seal, the moose, rabbit 
and other animals written in his usual vivid style. 

"A great book for boys of all ages, and one that could have been 
written only by Charles G. D. Roberts. " — Boston Times. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



JACK LONDON'S NEW BOOK 

The Turtles of Tasman 

$1*5 

Here are brought together some of Mr. London's best short 

stories, stories of adventure, of character, of unusual ex- 
periences in unusual places. Here will be found By the Turtles 
of Tasman, a tale of two brothers as different in nature as 
it is possible for human beings to be, and raising the old ques- 
tion as to which got the most out of life, the one with pos- 
sessions or the one with rich memories ; here also The Eternity 
of Forms, a mystery story dealing with a crime and its ex- 
piation; here again Told in the Drooling Ward, a masterly bit 
of writing which gives a human insight into the life of the 
inmates of a home for feebleminded people. Among the other 
stories are noted The Hobo and the Fairy, The Prodigal 
Father, The First Poet, Finis and The End of the Story. 

Gold Must Be Tried by Fire 

By RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER 

AUTHOR OF "THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH." 

From the opening chapter when Daidie Grattan revolts at the 
"eternal grind," defiantly destroys a valuable piece of machin- 
ery in the factory where she is employed, and runs out into 
the open, this story is brimful of action and character. In The 
Shepherd of the North Mr. Maher demonstrated his ability 
to create tense situations. Here his skill is once again seen and 
in addition he makes the reader acquainted with a number of 
interesting people, not the least of whom are Daidie herself 
and her ardent lover. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



The Key to Betsy's Heart 

By SARAH NOBLE IVES 

Cloth, I2M0, $1.25 

This is the story of Betsy and her dog. Betsy is a little 
country girl who, after her mother's death, is taken into the 
family of her Aunt Kate, a wise and charming person whose 
duty it is to bring Betsy up properly, while Betsy in turn 
has to bring up Van, a fox terrier. It is the dog, of course, 
that proves to be the key to the shy girl's heart — an ex- 
traordinarily nice "pup" whose education is carried on simul- 
taneously with Betsy's, only along different lines. Both as a 
dog story and as a girl story The Key to Betsy's Heart is 
eminently satisfying, and it is safe to conjecture that there 
will be many little girls in real life and a few elders, too, who 
will be delighted with it. 



Pilot 



By H. PLUNKETT GREEN 
Pilot is a roguish and cunning dog who is an inveterate 
poacher and has a distinct sense of humor. He always gets 
the best of the gamekeepers and other enemies and laughs 
in their faces. About him Mr. Green has woven a thoroughly 
enjoyable — and humorous — story. In addition to this the 
book includes a number of other tales, one or two dealing 
with fairies, with real charm and imagination, and others 
having to do with boys and fishing. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



r 



